


Of Other Paths and Waysides

by epiphanaea (Epiphanaea)



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Chapter-specific Warnings in Notes, F/M, Female Bilbo, Female Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield, Found Family, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Illness, Missing Scenes, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2018-01-19 14:01:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 90,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1472464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Epiphanaea/pseuds/epiphanaea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of (Rule-63ed) canon out-takes and what-ifs, leading up to a rather different ending - or, more accurately, a rather different beginning.  It is, as Gandalf said, the small things that matter most.</p><p>[Addendum 2-18-2015:  There are now illustrations, in a few chapters, with more to come - if you've seen these drawings before (say, on Tumblr), shhh, I promise I'm the same person.  :) ]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. At Bag End (An Introduction)

**Author's Note:**

> Please assume everything I haven’t actively changed happened exactly as it did in movie canon (only with a female Bilbo – who I’m calling Bella (Belladonna, for her mother), because . . . well, because. Naming a daughter after a mother (as opposed to a son for a father) seems ever-so-slightly-odd enough to be Tookish, to me.) Anyway, I will let you know where you should insert these bits into the canon by way of the chapter titles. You will almost certainly not be getting them in order, though I may go back and re-arrange as I go. 
> 
> Also, I may extrapolate according to my own whims from movie canon, without particular reference to book canon, let alone the canon of the extended works of Tolkien. Because unless you’ve already read and enjoy and basically memorized all of that (which I haven’t, though I did read The Hobbit some 27-odd years ago as a very small girl, and the first two Lord of the Rings books), that way lies madness. Pretty sure Tolkien would thoroughly disapprove of some portions of this anyway. . . . which is not to say that I won’t borrow bits of bookish lore here and there as they suit me.
> 
> I’m leaving this unrated for now – there may or may not be smut, I make no promises.

^*^*^*^

“Gandalf. I thought you said this place would be easy to find,” said the latest dwarf in Bella’s doorway.

Her very first impression of him – though it would seem odd and bitterly false to her later, before it began to seem true again – was of a wry, gentle sort of humor. There was a quirk of his lips, when he spoke to Gandalf – something weary of the world, but still fond of it. Things were not as he had expected them to be, but, Bella thought, that itself was _exactly_ as he expected things to be.

She liked him, in that first glimpse, remarkably much for an utter stranger – he struck her as a good sort of person. One she might easily call friend.

“I lost my way, twice. I wouldn’t have found it at all had it not been for that mark on the door.”

And that startled her out of any further contemplation of his character, or that strange feeling of kinship. “Mark? There’s no mark on that door, it was painted a week ago!” Bella objected, shuffling around the crowded gathering in her hallway (some peripheral part of her noting how the other dwarves, and even Gandalf, bowed their heads to this newcomer).

“There is a mark, I put it there myself,” answered Gandalf and, ignoring her expression of indignation at this, proceeded, “Belladonna Baggins, allow me to introduce the leader of our company, Thorin Oakenshield.”

Thorin’s gaze fell on her, and there was, at first, an expression almost of comradery there, as if he sympathized entirely with her sentiments in regard to her vandalized door. _Wizards,_ that look said, _what is to be done with them?_ But then it was clear that some other thought presented itself – some connection was made in his mind, and his face went first closed off and grim, and then angry.

“Mistress Baggins.” Thorin bowed his head to her, solemn and polite as you please – but then he turned to Gandalf, all but snarling, “Tell me this is not the hobbit.”

It seemed that Gandalf had failed to mention a few things to both Thorin and herself – to Thorin, that Bella happened to be female. And no lady warrior, either - she could recall imagining herself as such quite often, as a child (one of the fierce elven maidens out of her favorite stories, bearer of some famous, gleaming blade, bane of all evil things), but it was an ambition she’d abandoned some time ago. And not a _burglar,_ for goodness’ sake.

Bella thought it was quite enough that he hadn’t informed her he’d be inviting a company of thirteen dwarves to her table, but oh no, that was not nearly all – there was also the small matter of a quest, and a dragon.


	2. The first day on the road -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER SPECIFIC WARNING: There is brief discussion of complications in childbirth here, but it all turned out fine (the baby in question was Bella, who is obviously still around and quite well, and that was not how her mother died.)
> 
> ^*^*^*^

“Well did you expect me to come adventuring in layers of petticoats and an embroidered stomacher?” Bella snapped, when she’d had quite enough of the youngest of the dwarves eying her attire.

“What’s a stomacher?” asked the brown-haired one (Kíli, she thought, though all of their names sounded very similar to her at this point), while the blonde pointed out, “You did ask us to turn back for a handkerchief.”

“A handkerchief is a practical item,” Bella objected, which sent them into a new round of snorts and giggles. “I always -” She stopped herself.

“Always what?” She was nearly certain that one was Kíli.

“Never mind,” Bella said, in a very prim voice (the sort of very prim voice that reminded her entirely too much of her cousin Lobelia, and always made her feel vaguely ill when she heard it coming out of her own mouth, though it had developed a nasty habit of doing so whether she intended it or not in recent years).

 _I always made sure to pack several handkerchiefs, whenever I went adventuring before,_ Bella had nearly said, before she thankfully thought better of it. Her childish adventures had seemed real enough at the time – the ones in search of elves had proved universally unproductive (she refused to say ‘failed’, even these many years later), but she had earned herself a reputation as an excellent finder of rare mushrooms. And finding such had involved a great deal of venturing far off of any path, and climbing down into caves and under rotting logs, where there could well have been anything, thankyouverymuch.

Anyway, extra handkerchiefs were a must, if only for the wrapping up of more mushrooms than would fit in one’s basket.

Her reputation as a mushroom-hunter had been a trick to un-earn, after her parents had passed and it had become quickly and unfortunately clear to her that she had a choice – respectability, or a very lonely existence. There were days when she’d missed it – the thrill and the challenge and the odd, wild peace of it, and the taste of those thin, delicate orange ones that no one since had been able to find. But if she had spent many a foggy morning – perfect mushroom weather – wondering if they’d still be there, and what a state of decay that log must be in now, well, there was nothing to be done for it. Her soups and meat pies were poorer things, but she had people willing to sit at her table and share them. That was something for which an odd, Tookish spinster ought to be grateful.

Especially when Lobelia would never let anyone forget for a moment how strangely bookish she was, or the scandalousness of a young woman – barely of age! And that had worn on long after it was true – living alone, or the downright disgraceful way she allowed caterpillars to eat their fill of her garden.

The caterpillars were bright, soft, plump little things, though, and she felt rather protective of them. And they were better company than Lobelia any day.

She wasn’t going to see them grow this year, and spin their cocoons like little gems hanging from the undersides of leaves. And, it suddenly occurred to her, it was going to be quite some time before she got to read the next chapter in the book presently sitting on her bedside table. Her herbs were going to go all to seed with no one to cut and hang them. Why, it was going to be squash season soon, and in a couple weeks time there would be summer ales to be had, and she would be having none of them. She would miss all of that.

She missed her mother, abruptly and fiercely, in a way she hadn’t in years now – not that she’d admitted to herself, anyway.

Belladonna the elder would have been delighted to see her off. She would have broken out the dandelion wine for Gandalf – how had Bella forgotten that? He had supped with them quite often, of old, hadn’t he? - and demanded tales of his travels, and the same of the dwarves. And when they’d gotten to tossing her dishes about, she likely would have gone after them with her biggest iron pan, rather than fretting and fussing about it.

She would even have liked to see the show they made of all the juggling and tossing, really. And she would have had a wicked gleam in her eye at the thought of what the Sackville-Bagginses would have had to say to it all. And her father – solid and respectable as he had been – would have had his pipe in hand and a fond look on his face through it all. And later, he’d have written it all down, every word and step of it. The elder Bella would have shown the younger all his clever words and sketches in the dusk of the next day, at the hour of far-too-late-young-lady, when she was fresh-scrubbed and tucked in to bed.

And Bella, the younger, wouldn’t have slept for hours and hours, her mind spinning off in every direction.

“Where’d you even get those clothes?” asked Fíli, jolting Bella out of her reverie – and nearly off her pony, though she tightened her knees and clung to the reigns and managed to hang on.

“Stole ‘em, of course,” Kíli guessed. “She’s been practicing her burglaring. They don’t even fit properly, must be someone else’s.”

“Of course they’re someone else’s,” Fíli said. “Have you ever seen a lady hobbit in trousers before?”

“Yes!” Kíli insisted. “Those puffy ones, they wear them under their skirts.”

“Those aren’t trousers, they’re smallclothes, and you’d best not let Uncle hear you talking about them,” Fíli said, snorting.

“I wasn’t – I _didn’t_ –“

Fíli raised a challenging eyebrow at his brother, grinning widely.

“That time we came trading with Da, and snuck off to the river!” Kíli said. “You were there too, all the lasses had their skirts tucked up.”

“I remember digging for clams, and a good dinner,” Fíli said. “You’re the one who remembers the lasses’ smallclothes.”

“I was _twenty!_ ”

“And already with an eye for -”

At this Kíli lunged sideways, presumably to try to drag his brother off his pony, though Fíli was quicker and managed to evade him. Bella was momentarily afraid she would be caught up in a tumble, but her pony had the sense to get out of the way on its own.

“They’re my father’s!” Bella exclaimed, mostly to catch their attention before the situation devolved any further. There were already looks being directed their way from the front of the caravan. “The clothes, they belonged to my father.”

“Oh,” said Kíli, sounding disappointed. “You didn’t steal them, then?”

“No!”

“Wise, though,” said Fíli – who would have very little idea what was and wasn’t wise, in Bella’s estimation. “To travel in disguise. It’ll save us trouble going through towns, or if we meet anyone on the road.”

“What, to pretend she’s a lad?” Kíli asked, sounding doubtful. “She hasn’t got even the shadow of beard, and – um, well -” He began to make some manner of gesture, then promptly returned his hands to his reigns at the mocking look Fíli was giving him.

“The coat hangs well enough, and it’s long,” Fíli said diplomatically. “Button it up and it’ll do at a glance. And hobbits have no beards.”

Kíli still looked unconvinced, which Bella decided to take as a compliment on her appearance, rather than an aspersion cast on her talents at disguise. She hadn’t really meant to disguise herself, anyway – she’d only thought that it would be a very long way to go in tucked-up skirts and a tight bodice. Trousers and a sturdy coat would be far more practical, and it wasn’t like she would have any good name to come home to either way. If she was going to do this thing, she’d thought, she might as well do it in full measure.

“What should we call you, when strangers are about?” Fíli asked. “To keep up the ruse.”

“What was your father’s name?” Kíli suggested.

“Bungo,” Bella told them – and their faces both went very odd. “And what is wrong with that?” she demanded.

“Nothing,” Fíli was hasty to say, while Kíli struggled to smother a laugh. “Nothing at all. It’s a good, proper name for a hobbit, I’m sure, it’s only -”

“It’s one of the ponies!” Kíli burst out.

“One of the ponies what?” Bella asked.

“One of the ponies is named Bungo,” Fíli said, in a slightly more moderate tone. “We didn’t name them,” he hurried to add. “They came to us with their names, and they seem to know them. He’s a strong, sturdy pony, a good animal, perhaps the trader meant it as an honor? If he even knew your father.”

If they’d bought the ponies in the Shire, the odds that the trader knew her father were very great indeed, and Kíli was going to fall right off his own pony if he kept laughing like that. Bella decided she really didn’t want to ask if Bungo was one of their mounts – or hers, for that matter.

“I’m sure we can manage to distinguish you from a pony,” Fíli told her. “Or we’ll just call the pony something else. If it can learn one name, it can learn another.”

“I can think of another name,” Bella said, and there was that Lobelia-tone again.

“Have you got any brothers?” Kíli asked, still chortling.

“No, there was only me,” Bella answered.

“Do you know what they might have called you, had you been a son?” Fíli suggested. “Of course, you can pick anything, really. It needn’t be a family name. It’s not as if it would be a real name; you’ll likely never use it again, once we reach Erebor.”

“If they did, they never told me,” Bella said. “Though -” She hesitated.

“Though?”

“Well, apparently I was born quite blue,” Bella said. “And didn’t take a breath until the midwife smacked me on the back quite a few times. And my father, once he’d gotten over his fright – he was ordinarily a very sensible man, my father, not easily flustered – well, the way my mother told it, he was almost drunk with relief, and started laughing, and didn’t sober for some time. And apparently, in that state, he kept saying that we ought to call me Bilberry.” And the thought of that made her want to giggle, as it always did.

“Is that something you’d call a lad?” Kíli asked, sounding doubtful.

“Well, no, it’s girls who get named for plants most often,” Bella said. “I just . . . well, I just thought of it, is all,” she said, and was a bit surprised at herself. Why had she thought to tell them such a thing? But it was one of the stories her mother had told again and again, and she hadn’t heard it told in years. It felt good, strange but good, to tell it.

“It’s a good story,” Fíli said, smiling in a way that was oddly knowing. “Your mother and father sound like they were good folk.”

“They were,” Bella said, quietly – no longer feeling like laughing, but not sad, either.

“What if we put the two together?” Kíli offered brightly. “Bilberry and Bungo – Bilgo?”

“Bilbo,” said Fíli. “That sounds like a name for a hobbit, doesn’t it?”

“It does!” Kíli agreed. “What do you say? Care to be Bilbo?”

Fíli was right, it was not a momentous decision – but it felt oddly important, to be named, even temporarily, so she considered it a moment. “Yes,” she finally said. “Yes, I think so.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (If you listen carefully to the scene where they realize some ponies are missing, one of the ponies is, indeed, named Bungo.)


	3. In Rivendell

“Have you forgotten? A strain of madness runs deep in that family,” said Lord Elrond, in conversation with Gandalf on a walkway somewhere below and to the side of where Bella stood. It was well into the evening, and while the dusk and the mist off the waterfalls made it difficult to focus on anything too far away, voices carried unfortunately well.

Bella was keenly aware of Thorin standing at her shoulder; she had paused there by chance, at the sound of nearby conversation, and hadn’t noticed him at all until it was too late to casually move on. She had not meant to eavesdrop, but she was fairly certain that he had.

He could not like what he heard.

It did occur to her that he might deserve it, given how rude he had allowed – no, encouraged – the company to be. They had acted mad enough, or at least as if they had all the manners of a pack of wild dogs. It had been _embarrassing,_ extremely so.

“His grandfather lost his mind. His father succumbed to the same sickness. Can you swear Thorin Oakenshield will not also fall?”

But no, no-one could deserve to hear that, especially not when it was true.

She waited for Gandalf to speak in Thorin’s defense, but no such defense came, and it was Lord Elrond who spoke again. “Gandalf, these decisions do not rest with us alone. It is not up to you, or me, to re-draw the map of Middle Earth.”

“With or without our help, these dwarves will march on the mountain,” Gandalf answered. “They’re determined to reclaim their homeland. I do not believe Thorin Oakenshield feels that he is answerable to anyone. Nor, for that -” And they passed out of her hearing.

Bella looked over her shoulder at Thorin. “You know they say there's something off about my mother’s side of the family,” she offered. “Ask anyone, they’ll tell you the Tooks are all mad.”

She realized it was a stupid thing to say even as she was saying it, but she was still unprepared for the depth of the disdain in his tone. “Do they?" he asked, and his expression was one of mixed incredulity and scorn. "And do they say that they brought dragonfire and death down upon you all? Did they lose a kingdom in their mindless lust for gold, or abandon you people to their doom in battle?”

Bella tried to form a reply – hunted for the words of an apology, and it would need to be a good one – but found none.

“Well, Miss Baggins?” Thorin snarled at her. “Tell me what madness runs in your blood – do you fear that you may fail the last of your people? Abandon your friends in their hour of greatest need? Does it keep you from sleep, Miss Baggins, wondering if, should you achieve all that you set out to do, you might then lose all sense and honor and bring those you would restore to greatness only yet more sorrow?”

He had stepped closer and closer to her, so that now he loomed over her, huge in his rage. She tried not to cringe, but of course he saw it, and that only brought a look of even greater disgust to his face. He backed away a few steps, fists clenched at his sides.

“Well?” he demanded.

“No,” she managed. To her great shame, her voice cracked, on the verge of tears.

Thorin muttered something under his breath and turned on his heel, stalking over to the end of the walkway and bracing his hands on the railing. His head hung low, and his shoulders heaved as if he breathed hard.

“I’m sorry,” Bella said, squeezing her eyes shut and trying to gather herself. He had done no more than raise his voice to her, what was _wrong_ with her? She was not a child, to dissolve into tears at a little shouting! “That was a horrible, thoughtless thing to say, I never meant -”

“Stop,” Thorin said, sounding lost and hollow. He sighed heavily, then turned to face her. “You owe me no apology; forgive me my temper, it was not you who earned it.”

“Still, I -”

“Go pack your things, Mistress Baggins,” Thorin said, and his voice held a great and implacable weariness. “We are leaving.”


	4. That first night at Beorn's

^*^*^*^

Bella could not say what had woken her; she had laid down in the straw before the sun had fully set and had been certain she would sleep until it was well risen. When had they last had the luxury of walls about them? Such meager comfort as a bed of uncovered straw? There had even been honeyed bread waiting on the table, and berries, and mead (which she’d felt a little guilty in eating, recalling the decimation of her own winter stores at the hands of this same company – but hunger won out. Quickly.)

In her childhood – well into her tweens, to be honest – she would have considered bedding down in a barn and subsisting on pilfered wine and sweets to be an adventure in itself. Now, it was a desperately needed respite from one. She had not known it was possible to be so tired.

Yet here she was, awake, though it was yet night, and her eyes were still heavy and her thoughts slow. The rest of the company slumbered on around her.

No, she realized – most of them did. She counted twelve sleeping forms – no Gandalf (right, of course not, why shouldn’t it be time for another random disappearance?) And no Thorin.

That was a bit more troubling.

Bella sat up carefully; for all she knew, Thorin had just gone in search of a privy. There was no reason to disturb the others’ rest. On the other hand, if something was amiss, it would be best to figure that out as quickly as possible. It seemed prudent to just have a look around for him; she had seen worse things by now than a dwarf pissing, and was fairly certain that he’d forgive her a little embarrassment sooner than he’d forgive inaction on account of it.

For once all her childhood ‘adventuring’ paid off in reality; she was very good at moving soundlessly through straw, and even better at making sure her feet caused not a single creak from the wooden floor. Before she’d ventured too far past where the company lay sleeping, she heard it – a sound from the pantry. She stilled, and listened, and it came again, quieter this time as if deliberately muffled.

A sob.

Bella looked back over her shoulder to see if any of the others had stirred, but all she saw was Bombur rolling over in his sleep. Kíli scowled, and his fingers twitched as if he reached for something, but his eyes remained closed. She was the only one who’d heard, and she didn’t know what to do. Thorin would not want any of them to see him weep, least of all her.

But why was he weeping? They lived; they were closer than ever to their goal.

Another muffled, mournful gasp for breath came from the pantry, and some combination of instinct and numbing weariness decided her – better to face him honestly now than spend the rest of their quest hiding the fact that she’d heard.

She was able to ease the pantry door open almost without sound, but Thorin was scrambling to his feet, blade already in hand, by the time she leaned around it.

“It’s only me!” Bella whispered while he blinked at her, wary and stunned. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

He stared a moment longer, before sighing and sheathing his sword. He turned half away from her, shoulders squared and spine rigid. “Gandalf did say hobbits were light on their feet. It is good to know he spoke truly. What do you need? Is all well?”

A small window on the far wall let in a little moonlight – enough for her to see that he was pale except for his red and swollen eyes, and his hands trembled. “Everything’s fine,” Bella said, hesitated, then decided she might as well speak. She crept inside and closed the door behind her. “Except you – you’re not fine. Are you?”

He turned sharp toward her, as tense as if she’d issued a threat. “I’m sorry,” she said hastily. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. I won’t say anything to the others.”

“You cannot,” he told her, but there was more desperation than command in his tone. He covered his face with one hand. “They look to me, all of them, do you understand? They cannot -”

“I understand,” Bella assured him. “I do. I wouldn’t.”

He took his hand from his eyes and watched her, and the indecision and the torment was clear in his face. “Could you understand the words the Defiler spoke?” he finally asked.

“No,” Bella said.

He nodded, as if that was as he’d suspected, and sank down against the wall. His arms rested on his knees, hands dangling, and he let his head fall back. She could see his throat bob as he shut his eyes and swallowed, his mouth a grimly held line but his nostrils flaring and his whole body shuddering with his ragged breath.

“Could you?”

“Yes,” he said. “I do not -” His voice broke and he stopped, swallowed, drew in air as if it were a struggle. Maybe it was; more than one of his ribs must have been broken, the way he’d been mauled and tossed. “I do not know how many of the others did,” Thorin went on, voice low and strangled. “The wizard, undoubtedly. Balin, Dwalin. Bifur, perhaps, though who can say?”

Bella crossed the small space to sit beside him – not so close as to touch, but close enough to tell that he still smelled of warg, and his own blood, and stale, fearful sweat. She must stink too, she thought. She hadn’t bathed in ages, and there was orc blood on her coat and in her hair.

There was a strange sort of comfort in the lack of pretense. They had earned their wretched stench together.

“Will you not ask what he said to me?”

“No,” Bella said. “You’ll tell me if you want to, or you won’t. I’ll sit here, though, if you don’t mind. You shouldn’t – no one should sit alone in the dark, when the night grows . . . heavy,” she said, having to search out the proper word. “So unless you’d prefer your solitude, I will keep watch with you, against whatever it is that assails you, and you need not speak of it at all, if you don’t want to.”

He turned to look at her, at that, and she turned her eyes to the shelves across the small room, feeling hot and cold and vulnerable, but determined.

“Have you sat many lonely watches?” he asked, quietly surprised, voice still thick with tears. “I would not have thought it.” And there was, she thought, the barest hint of an apology in those words.

“Not like this,” Bella answered. “Being hunted or taunted by orcs is an entirely new experience for me, thanks, but -“ And she didn’t know why, but her own voice caught. She took a few steadying breaths. “Even in quiet, comfortable places, there are accidents, and sickness, and . . . and folk being terrible to one another for terrible reasons. I haven’t suffered any great calamity, nothing to give me a right to complain, but –“ She swallowed, and had no way to finish.

Heavy; it was a good word, for this night, for other nights past. Nights when Bag End had been very empty, and her mind had been very full of hard and weighty things. He said nothing, but she could tell he was listening. That he had heard, both what she’d said and what she hadn’t.

“Yes,” she concluded. “Yes, I suppose I have.”

He nodded, solemn, and returned her the courtesy of not asking.

And then there was quiet, but for Bombur’s snores coming from the stables, and the sound of insects and small creatures out in the night. Thorin crossed his arms on his knees, then lowered his head onto his forearms. He seemed peaceful, for a while – she thought he might even have fallen asleep. He shivered, though, at irregular intervals, and then Bella realized his shoulders were once again shaking, though he made no sound. She felt, again, at a loss as to what to do, just as she had been when she first heard him weeping – but then she was angry at herself for her fear, because fear it was. Fear of awkwardness and embarrassment and revealing more of her heart than she intended – petty, unworthy fears that had no place here.

She put her hand on his heaving shoulder, just laying it there at first, then tightening her grip when she heard the ragged sob he tried to bury in his knees. He hunched tighter in on himself, and the sheath of his sword made a harsh scraping sound across the floorboards as he moved – he startled and froze, not even breathing.

“It’s alright,” Bella said. “It wasn’t that loud, I don’t think anyone’s heard. Listen, Bombur’s still snoring. They sleep like the dead, the lot of them, they really do.”

He exhaled, and his hand came up to cover hers, clutching tight enough to hurt. “I -” He cleared his throat. “I am in your debt for this.”

“No need for that,” Bella said.

He lifted his head, catching her hand when she would have withdrawn it and holding it between both of his, on his knees. The cloth there was wet and still warm from his tears. “There is need,” he said roughly. “There is much need for me to thank you, for more than this.”

“Well, then.” She managed to wrap her fingers around his and squeeze. “You’re very welcome?”

His lips lifted in a sad ghost of a smile, quickly gone. He turned his face once more away, but he did not release her hand. “I have never met your like, Mistress Baggins,” he said, “Nor do I believe I will again.” A breath. “Azog.” Another breath, deeper, as if in great pain. “He spoke of my father.”

“Oh,” Bella said, and slowly recalled what she’d been told of how and when and where Thrain went missing. “Oh – oh no. Thorin.”

“He said he stank of fear,” Thorin choked out. “He spoke of it as if it were a thing long past, and I do not – I do not think he spoke falsely. I want to believe his words were no more than lies meant to torment me, I want that more than anything in this world, but something in me -” And he could speak no more.

“I’m sorry,” Bella said. “I am so, so sorry.”

“My father died alone and broken in terror at the hands of that -” He slipped into his native tongue, voice rising to where she began to fear the others would hear. Bella couldn’t understand what he said, but she didn’t need to. His voice cracked and failed, words dissolving into a strangled wail, smothered against their joined hands. For long moments more there was only the sound of his struggling to breathe – to hold in a scream, she thought.

When he spoke again, his voice was dull and despairing, first his own language and then in the common tongue. “My father is dead. He is dead.”

 _So is mine, and my mother too_ , she thought, but did not say. She clung to his hand, and he curled around it, once again weeping.

She didn’t hear Bombur snoring anymore, but she didn’t hear approaching footsteps either, so she said nothing of it. None of them would think less of him for this, she was sure of it – who could? No one with an ounce of decency, and certainly not such loyal friends to him as the company were. And if Balin knew the cause of Thorin’s grief, he would make sure the others knew enough not to mention it.

“Do you -” Bella stopped herself; there was that fear again, of overstepping, of looking a fool. It made her ashamed of herself – she could not, it seemed, help feeling it, even here, even now, but she would not let it rule her.

Not ever again, she decided. Not with him, after this.

“Do you have songs you sing, for the dead?” she asked.

A nod; he did not try to speak.

“So do we,” Bella said. “They’re just simple songs, about . . . oh, ever-green fields and endless summers where they’ve gone, that kind of thing, it’s – they’re not very dwarvish, and not songs for the funeral of a king either, not very stately or -”

“Bella.” His voice was nearly unrecognizable. “You would sing for him?”

“I could sing what was sung at my father’s funeral,” she offered. “Though I don’t sing very well at all. I wasn’t the one who sang it, that was my cousin, much better voice, but – but it was a comfort to me. I didn’t know your father, but I know you, and that makes me think he must have been a very great dwarf. So yes, I would sing for him, if you think he wouldn’t mind a hobbitish song.”

“His son would not mind,” Thorin said, and turned his head upon his knees to smile sadly at her. “His son would not know how to thank you.”

And Bella did not know how to take his thanks, nor the look in his bloodshot, running eyes, so she returned his smile, trembling, and then looked away before she began to softly sing.

It really was no song for the dwarf who should have been king under the mountain, neither the words nor the voice that sang it, but Thorin fell into an exhausted sleep, slumped against her shoulder and still clinging to her hand, before she ceased.

The next morning – she woke beneath her own blankets when the master of the house returned, and could only gather that Thorin had carried her there – there was something changed in the way the others looked at her, even moreso than there had already been since the battle. They had heard, of course – Thorin must know that they had, but neither he nor they spoke of it. He was still pale and sunken-eyed and had clearly been weeping at length, but they were all careful not to see it.

And when his back was turned, each and every one of them found an opportunity to nod their heads to her. Fíli pulled her into a hasty, brotherly embrace, mumbling thanks into her ear, Kíli looked a bit red about the eyes himself, and Balin –

Balin bowed, and from that point on, began addressing her as, ‘my lady.’

^*^*^*^


	5. Mirkwood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is movie-Mirkwood, not book-Mirkwood; they’re rather different. I was a little disappointed when I first saw the movie interpretation, really, just because it didn’t quite evoke the same sense of this place that I’d had in my head since childhood – but, on the other hand, as someone who spends a great deal of time in the woods as an adult, often at night? Movie-Mirkwood is much, much scarier, because much of what was scary about the original Mirkwood is . . . actually pretty typical of dense forest? Dead, creaky, unnaturally still movie-Mirkwood would spook me way worse.

She would not complain. There would be no moaning, or shuffling of her feet, or gagging. She would bear up as well as any of them; she would _not_ be a burden, not when she had only just earned their respect. Not over a bit of ill-favored forest.

That stank of death and rot.

And not the sort of rot that meant good soil in the making, not the earthy smell that made her eyes brighten and start casting about for mushrooms. No, this was a stench like a sick-room, or something gone off in the larder, and she just didn’t understand how the air could taste so stale with no walls to close it in. The smell crawled up the back of her throat and seeped into her skull and made her head ache as if it pressed down on her from all sides.

And then, where the path was obscured or missing stones, there was the ground itself – the dirt. Having her toes in the mud had never bothered her before, but this – this didn’t feel like proper dirt at all. It was skin-crawlingly spongy and slick, as if the forest had suffered some great wound, something that did not heal but oozed putrescence, and she was walking through it. It seeped between her toes and up the backs of her ankles and, when it dried, cracked into a fine powder that clung in the hair on her feet and up her legs.

Shoes had always seemed like silly things, before, but oh how she envied the dwarves their boots.

It was too quiet and too loud all at once; without any wind, the trees should not creak and groan that way. But there ought to have been birds calling, creatures rustling in the undergrowth, and there were none. The quiet made her feel watched, hunted – she’d spent enough time in the woods back home to have a sense for such places, and when the forest went still, it was wise to do the same. To get out of the open. To hide, or run.

She thought the others must feel some of the forest’s wrongness too, because they plodded forth in resolute silence, without any of their usual singing or jesting or story-telling.

The first day’s march wore on interminably, Bella’s malaise passing into a weary numbness and then into a sort of awful, drunken daze. She nearly walked right into Nori’s back before she realized that Thorin had called for them to halt. There was still a little light left; she thought it had been fading for the past hour or so, but couldn’t swear to it. Even in the small clearing where they’d stopped, the sun was almost entirely obscured by the branches – which was odd itself, because the leaves were as sparse and brown as if it were the dead of winter, and not the last days of summer.

The whole company was sullen and visibly weary as they set up camp, barely speaking except to snarl and snap at one another. Bella tried to assist in the gathering of kindling, but found herself forgetting her purpose and staring down at some patch of leaf-strewn ground for she knew not how long, again and again.  She managed to collect only a sad handful of twigs, most of them damp.

Bombur grumbled darkly as he tried to get the fire going – the others had done better than Bella had, but there was little in the way of wood to be found that wasn’t wet and rotting. Arguments broke out all around, voices sharp and sour, over such petty things as would have been cause for teasing or a good-natured tussle on any other evening – how the supplies had been packed, the claiming of spots for sleep between the roots, the assignment of watches through the night. Thorin stood with his back to the camp, glowering into the gloom down the path, clearly lost in his own mind. Bifur couldn’t seem to settle, pacing and glaring off into the trees and muttering nonsense. When the fire caught, the smoke was a sickly yellow, and it made Bella’s eyes water. Ori sat down, wrapped his arms around himself, and just stared into the flames.

Supper was cobbled together eventually, by which time it was clearly dusk. Bombur cooked up all the fresh things Beorn had given them that wouldn’t keep; the result was a hearty dish of green vegetables with some manner of soft cheese melted on top, and such a good meal ought to have lifted her spirits.

Bella sat on a log and stared down into her bowl and tried to summon the courage to take a bite. The others were eating, if without the enthusiasm that such fare deserved – it would be some time before they would have its like again. Potatoes and lentils and beans, hard cheese, perhaps a bit of dried meat, that’s what they would have to look forward to in the weeks to come.

Bella knew that it would be a long march again tomorrow, and that she would be both hungry and weak if she ate nothing. She was hungry _now_ – it was just that the idea of putting anything in her mouth that had so much as been touched by the air of this place was horrifying.

Bombur was starting to eye her suspiciously, as she sat there not eating. With the temper everyone was in, he was sure to be offended if she didn’t take a bite soon.

And she couldn’t very well go without food until they got through the forest, could she? It would be days, if not weeks. _Better get used to it now_ , she scolded herself, and brought a determinedly generous spoonful to her lips.

It tasted like she had a mouthful of rotten meat.

Bella gagged and spat and dropped her bowl, and was only distantly aware of the commotion she was causing. Her eyes streamed and her stomach lurched, and she could only be glad that breakfast had been some time ago.

Someone shoved a jug into her hands, and she drank frantically.

Mead; Beorn’s mead, watered down but still blessedly cool and sweet and untainted on her tongue. She gulped more than she should have, but no one moved to take it from her, and gradually sense returned.

With it came the lingering of flavors on the back of her tongue; not foulness and rot, but the mellow richness of cheese and green foods. She wobbled a bit; someone grabbed the jug from her hands before she could spill it. When Bella was able to blink her eyes back into focus, Óin’s frowning face hovered before hers.

“You sick, lass?” he asked worriedly.

“There’s nothing wrong with the food!” she heard Bombur insist.

“No one’s saying there is,” Bofur answered, placating.

“Good, because there isn’t!”

“Oi, hobbit!” Óin insisted, waving his hand in front of her eyes, then pressing the back of it to her forehead. “No fever, but she’s not right,” he pronounced.

“No, it’s -” Bella had to stop to swallow thickly. “It’s nothing. I’m fine, I’m so sorry I spilled my vegetables, Bombur, that was very rude of me.”

Her head had stopped spinning enough so that she could look around the camp, and see all of their disbelieving faces.

She became aware that there was a hand on her shoulder, steadying her; Thorin, and next to him stood Bifur, with the jug of mead in hand. Thorin was watching her unnervingly closely, his expression grim, and she couldn’t tell if he was angry with her – she’d wasted fresh food! – or worried for her, or maybe some of both. Or neither. The more she tried to think about it the wobblier she felt, so she sat, or tried to. She ended seated back on the log anyway, but that had more to do with Thorin’s hand guiding her down and not letting go than any ability of her own to control her legs.

“You get more banged up than we knew, lass?” That was Dwalin. “Warg got it’s teeth into you, maybe?” This produced distressed mutterings from the rest. “That’ll fester like nothing you’ve ever seen, so you’d better not be modest if you got bit somewhere you’d rather we not see.”

“She wouldn’t be that foolish,” Kíli snapped, for which Bella was grateful – but then he turned fearful eyes on her. “You wouldn’t, would you?”

“No,” Bella answered, with rather less force than she intended. Her head felt hollow, and her belly full of rocks. “I’m not hurt, and I don’t think I’m ill, I’m just . . . not feeling very well for the moment. I really am sorry about the food.”

“Forget about the food,” Thorin said, voice low. “We’re near enough to the skinchanger’s to take you back if you’re unwell.”

“No!” Bella exclaimed, shrugging off his hand and glaring up at him, aghast. “You can’t mean that! You can’t send me back now, after – after everything! I didn’t slow you down today and I won’t slow you down tomorrow, or the next day either, my stomach’s just -”

“So you haven’t been feeling well all day, then,” Óin interpreted accusingly, and Bella shut her eyes and dropped her dizzy head into her hands in frustration.

She heard someone shuffling through the bunch of them to stand close in front of her. Then Balin’s voice. “I have read,” he said, “that hobbits have a great affinity for growing things.”

Bella opened her eyes, peering out from between her fingers. He had crouched down so they were at eye level with one another.

“Is that so, my lady?”

Bella nodded.

“And this forest – you feel its sickness, don’t you?”

Again, she nodded.

Balin sighed and straightened. “Thought as much. You haven’t been right since we set eyes on this accursed place – none of us have, but you’ve had it worst. You’ve borne up well, considering.”

To the others, he turned and said, “Think of how it was in the goblin tunnels, lads – to feel the very stone around you corrupted. Could you have eaten in there?”

This produced looks of horrified comprehension.

“If there’s aught we can do to make it easier for you,” Balin told her, “you tell us.”

“No,” Bella said, “No, we’ve just got to make it through, and I’ll be fine. I can manage it.”

“Not if you don’t eat, you can’t,” Óin said. “You’ve got to try to get something in your belly.”

“Here,” Bofur offered, digging in his coat pockets. He came up with a piece of dried meat, liberally crusted with spices. “Try this; that should to be enough to get the stink of this place out of your nose.”

It looked like leather, and smelled like it would burn her tongue off – she’d seen Bombur shredding something like it into their stews, and that had been more than enough to season the whole pot to her taste.

But Bofur was waiting expectantly, Óin was watching her in a very stern and assessing way, and the rest of them just looked worried and miserable. Thorin was still frowning his Most Serious Frown, and she actually thought – her head having cleared somewhat - that it was out of concern for her.

She tried to take a cautious nibble of the meat, but it was too tough for that. Kíli helpfully mimed tearing off a piece with her back teeth, and while it was tempting to roll her eyes – did they really think she was so pathetic that she had to be instructed in how to chew her food? – she ended up doing just that, at which he looked ridiculously pleased with himself.

It was peppery and smoky and faintly sweet, and hot enough that she could feel her face flush with it, but Bofur was right – it overwhelmed the forest’s unnatural stench, and she could stand the thought of swallowing it and eating more.

She smiled, rasped out, “Good!” and had to clear her throat. Thorin shoved the jug back into her free hand and she took a few moderate sips before ripping off another bite of meat.

They all relaxed, at that – and while their weariness settled visibly back on them with the tension passed, their ill-temper did not. It seemed that her incident had broken something of the sullen haze that had enveloped them as the day wore on, and made them notice that their misery was shared. They settled down to rest with a few complaints yet, but also a careful, brittle sort of patience for one another.

Then the last feeble rays of the sun disappeared, and the darkness fell.

It was silent, save for that awful, windless groaning and creaking of the branches, as if something large was moving high above them. No insects sang, nor gathered around their quickly fading fire. No owls called, and no stir of bat wings disturbed the air. Nothing snuffled or scurried in the leaves. And the smell – oh, the smell only worsened, when the night air ought to have been cooler and clearer. Instead it closed in, and the dew on her skin had a foul oiliness to it.

This was no forest as Bella knew it; this was a horror like an open grave. The decayed, skeletal remains of a forest. And though she wanted nothing more than to close her eyes and retreat into dreams for a while, Bella couldn’t manage to silence the prickling of instinctual fear at the base of her skull, and could not sleep. None of them settled easily, but one by one the rest of the company fell into exhausted slumber.

“Miss Baggins.” Thorin’s voice came hushed and low out of the black as she rolled over for what felt like the hundredth time; he sat watch now, though she thought it had been Fíli when last she looked. Perhaps she was drifting in and out of sleep after all, but could not leave this place even in dreams.

“Yes?”

“You will be weary on the morrow if you do not sleep.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that, but that doesn’t mean that I can,” she whispered back.

She heard the crunch of bootsteps on leaves, picking their way haltingly among sleeping forms. Thorin sat on a twisted knot of root beside where she lay. “You are still unwell.”

“It’s not as bad now,” Bella answered, which was at least a little true, if also a little false. “It’s a bit better laying down.” It was also a bit worse, with only a blanket between her and the putrid earth.

He grunted quiet acknowledgment of that.

“How long do you think it will take to pass through?” Her voice was very small, and she hated that she was weak enough to ask. It would take as long as it took, and there was nothing for it and no point to such a question, but she still craved some reassurance that there would be an end. It had only been a _day_.

“Little more than a week, if we can keep to our current pace,” Thorin said. “No more than a fortnight at most.”

“Right. Well, that’s – that’s not so bad,” Bella said determinedly, while inwardly she wailed. “Only a week or two – a person can endure almost anything for just a week or two, can’t they? And it’ll get easier as we go on, I think - I’ll grow accustomed to it.”

“You will have to,” Thorin answered – not words of comfort, not that she’d expected such, but there was none of the sneering doubt that would have accompanied the statement just days ago. These words were imbued with a companionable sort of cynicism, and they found a spark of humor somewhere in her that rose into a weary chuckle.

She couldn’t see whether he smiled in response, but she thought he had, and could not have said why.

“It’s affecting you too, you know,” Bella told him – it needed to be said. “You’re not yourselves.”

“I know,” Thorin responded, no trace of laughter in his voice now. “I can feel it in my mind like the chill of a shadow over all my thoughts. It whispers dark things in a voice that is nearly my own, and if I were not forewarned about this place, I think they would begin to seem like sense.”

“I think I prefer to be ill,” Bella said – and thought of her ring. It was much the same, wasn’t it? That could mean nothing good, and she thought, again, that she ought to say so – to tell them that she possessed such a thing, at the least. She should have spoke of it to Gandalf; why hadn’t she?

And yet something stilled her tongue, now as then.

“So would I,” Thorin admitted, almost too quietly to hear, and Bella remembered how he’d berated her in Rivendell – his fear of the madness in his blood. “But that is easy for me to say, when I do not suffer as you do.”

“We’re both suffering,” Bella answered. “There’s not much use in trying to figure who has it worse.”

“We shall all have to endure,” Thorin said.

“One foot in front of the other until it’s behind us,” Bella agreed, and shuffled around in her blankets until she was sitting propped up against the tangled roots beside him. “I might as well keep watch with you if I’m not going to be sleeping.”

“Can you see at all in this dark?” he asked, sounding doubtful.

“No,” Bella admitted. The fire was almost gone, and they had no more wood to feed it. “But I can hear.”

“I can see a little,” Thorin said. “Less than I should, for what light the moon and the fire provide; in the depths of the earth, by only the glow of coals, I could see more than this.” He paused. “I would give much for the strength of stone around me, the sharp, clean smell of deep places, this night – such things are hard to remember here, and very far away.”

Bella thought of the softness of a bed and shelter from the damp and a full belly that did not resent its fullness. A fire built up as high and hot as she wanted it, and a book to pass the small hours of the night. Hot tea. A warm bath – oh, that would be lovely. To be _clean_.

But none of that was what he meant – he did not speak of comforts, but of something closer to the heart of him. “Green leaves. The way a garden smells after it rains,” Bella said.

“The heat of a forge; the taste of molten metal in the air.”

“Beeswax candles burning.”

“Yes, candles. Golden light,” Thorin said, and she could hear the weight of memory in his voice. “It glows there, Miss Baggins; the stone gleams. That is not even the word for it; this is no harsh glare, but a light in its depth, and the candles only reveal it.”

There was no need to ask where he meant.

“You will see it again soon,” Bella said, and it sounded like a promise – as much of one as she could give, though she felt very small.

She heard him shift, a rustle of cloth, and then the brush of fingers seeking hers. She caught his hand. His skin was cold and unpleasantly damp with the oily dew, and she knew hers was the same, but warmth flooded back into her fingers as she held tight to his.

“We will see it,” Thorin said. “I would like very much to show it to you - for what you suffer and endure. I will ask more of you before this is done, but then -” He stopped, and though Bella waited, he said no more for some time.

And then, “I would show it to you in its glory, if I could,” Thorin told her. “All the warmth of golden memory, and the happiness I knew there before it all went wrong.”

“You will,” Bella said. “And you do, every time you speak of it.”

There was another long span of quiet, and the darkness pressing in, and with it a cold and insidious dread. Bella almost wished that Thorin hadn’t told her of the shadow whispering in his mind, because now she thought she could hear it too, and didn’t know if it was real or imagined. But no, she decided – no, she would not wish that he trusted her less, and she would not regret that he shared his burden with her. Not for any measure of peace or on account of any degree of fear would she wish that. She held that thought firm in her mind like a blade drawn against the dark.

She cared for him – more than she liked to admit, but this was no place for pretense. She cared for him, and this wretched, ghoulish place could not have that, could not touch that, she would not allow it.

“Would you tell me more of your home?” Thorin asked. “I was not of a mind to see it when I was there, but I would like to turn my thoughts toward a warm hearth and halls sheltered beneath the earth, in this foul place. My own memories are too full of loss.”

Hers were not untouched by grief, and the shadow in her mind wanted her to tell him so – whispered to her that she should cling to her hurts, and resent his ignorance of them. But no – _no_.

And so, hushed and halting, she began to speak of Bag End and Hobbiton, the Bindbale wood and Bywater Pool – and as she spoke they shifted closer together as if the words drew them both in, until their joined hands rested where their knees touched, and her head found it fit well in the curve of his shoulder. They were a mirror of how they’d sat the night before, when his head had been heavy with grief on her shoulder. Where they rested together, there was warmth. He woke no one else to take the watch, and the night, though long, did pass.

 

 


	6. Mirkwood II / The Elven dungeons

^*^*^*^

The days wore on and blurred together. Bella’s sickness did not pass, though she grew better at bearing it with equanimity. She learned to eat when she wanted to be sick, and to sleep when her every instinct demanded alertness - to trudge through fear and horror like slogging through mud.

The others only got worse. By the time a week had passed, they were all acting like a company of sullen drunkards, caught interminably on the edge between senseless inebriation and the sickness that follows it. Bella was not the only one who could barely stomach a few mouthfuls at a time, anymore – which was fortunate, in its own way, as their supplies were dwindling at an alarming rate. She did not ask again how long their crossing would take, but she suspected it would be a good deal longer than Thorin had supposed. The path twisted and turned and dragged them up rocky slopes and down through gullies and seemed, at times, to wind in near-circles for no reason Bella could discern.

Then they lost the path altogether.

They ran out of water first, and were reduced to drinking the morning dew, foul though it was. Her head pounded constantly, and her tongue felt dry and strange in her mouth. They went from three meals a day to two, to one, and that one shrank and shrank while the ache in her belly grew alongside her fear.

Then came the spiders.

And then, the elves.

Bella had developed a number of romantic notions about elves as a young girl, and her experiences in Rivendell had done little to dispel them. She may have found Lord Elrond’s judgment of Thorin harsh and unkind, but he hadn’t known it would be overheard – and aside from that, the elves of Rivendell had been everything she’d ever imagined them to be. It had been difficult to leave, and a comfort to know that she’d be welcomed back. It was an invitation she had no present intention of using (she tried very hard not to think past the end of their quest anymore, truth be told), but it pleased her to think that such good and noble folk had found her worthy of their friendship.

Her first impression of the wood elves, though far less charitable – what had the Company done to deserve to be held at arrow-point and threatened? They had not asked to become lost in this wretched forest, and surely it was the elves’ own fault if their roads were not safe to travel! – was still tinged with faint awe. Less wise, and more dangerous, Beorn had called them – that certainly seemed to be true. Never had she seen such agility; they fought as if it was a dance. That, at least, deserved admiration.

That admiration waned considerably when she heard how the one who seemed to be their leader spoke to Glóin. Who would mock a child to his father? No one she cared to know, that’s who, no matter whether he could aim a bow while skidding down a skein of spider silk or not.

And then there was that elf’s own father – the elves’ king. Thranduil. The same elven king, it seemed, who had broken faith with Erebor and denied them aid when the dragon came. That was more than enough reason for Bella to dislike him all on its own, but she thought that even had she known nothing about that, she would not have formed a very favorable first impression of him.

Really, she hadn’t known it was possible to want so badly to kick someone within an hour of not-even-meeting them. She’d always considered herself rather mild-tempered. Perhaps it was just the tantalizing idea that she could likely get away with it, in her invisible state. She tried to scold herself for such a reckless impulse. Which would Thorin would rather, she demanded of herself, that she remain hidden and work on their rescue, or risk her own capture for the satisfaction of stepping on the elvenking’s robes and seeing him trip?

But on second thought, she realized she couldn’t actually be too sure of Thorin’s answer to that question.

Her own, however, had to be more sensible. Petty vengeance would have to keep. She would rescue the Company (and steal fresh supplies; she was under contract as a burglar, after all, wasn’t she?). They would find their way out of the forest, re-take the Mountain, and then –

. . . and then what?

Not invite Thranduil to parties?

That was the extent of the education in politics that the Shire had provided her, and realizing that, Bella had a moment of feeling very small, very out-of-place, and very, very overwhelmed. Obviously there would be more to relations between realms than that, she wasn’t a fool, she knew just exactly how much she didn’t know, which was just – just –

Oh, she was tired.

There were secure walls about her. The air was tolerable to breathe. There would have to be _food_ somewhere in this place. She felt like a puppet with cut strings, and all she wanted to do was sit down where she stood and cry.

Soon, Bella promised herself, drawing in a shaking breath so that it filled her chest and straightened her spine. She squared her shoulders. First and foremost, she had to discover where the dwarves were being held – she really ought to have followed when Thorin was taken away, but at the time it had seemed more important to stay and listen. She’d thought that perhaps Thranduil would discuss the matter with someone else of importance, reveal something that would be of use to her.

It seemed, however, that Thranduil didn’t believe there to be other people of importance, if the way he treated his captain of the guard was any indication. That was, Bella supposed, useful information in and of itself – poor masters made for inattentive servants, in her experience – but she couldn’t immediately see any way to use such an advantage. But, as it turned out, the dwarves were not so very hard to find – she just had to follow the sound of Thorin’s enraged shouting.

By the time she found her way through the maze of tunnels and arched bridges that lead to the dungeons, Thorin had paused – she could only presume for breath - so it was Balin who she first heard speaking as she neared.

“ – hope,” Balin was saying, in a tone that was very much contrary to the word.

“Not our only hope,” Thorin answered

There was a pause, in which Bella tried to figure out how exactly one was meant to get from the path on which she stood to the one two levels below, where the doors to Balin and Thorin’s cells were.

“Thorin,” Balin said, a moment later, voice cautious and heavy. “She’s alone out there, now.”

“She was alone in the goblin tunnels,” Thorin retorted; they were talking about her, Bella realized. “Yet she survived, Balin, and she came back to us. She’s the one who cut us free when the spiders had overwhelmed us; were it not for her, we’d still be trussed up and hanging like sides of beef.”

“Aye, I know,” Balin said. “She’s capable, I’m not saying otherwise. It’s only -”

“What is it only? I will not give up hope for her.”

“You can try to make it sound like I’ve no faith in her all you like,” Balin snapped, all patience or forbearance gone from his tone, “But the truth is I’m afraid for her out there on her own, and so are you, or you would be if you weren’t pinning all your hopes of an escape on her. She has no supplies, Thorin, she was up a tree and Bofur had her pack. We’ve seen no sign of beast nor fowl, there’s nothing for her to hunt - even supposing she knows how, though I’ve seen no evidence of that. She won’t find roots or mushrooms to eat – she’s been trying for days with no luck, as well you know. She’ll have no blankets for sleep, nothing between her and the cold when the dark falls – the dark in which she cannot see at all, mind, and she has no flint stone, even supposing she can find enough dry wood for a fire all on her own, never mind the trouble fourteen of us had at that same task. And the spiders -”

“What would you have me do?” Thorin demanded.

“Tell them,” Balin said, and Bella could hear how he deflated as he spoke the words – he knew they wouldn’t be heeded, but he needed to have tried, she thought. “Tell the elves she’s still out there, alone, defenseless. Let them search for her. Better a cell than a spider’s belly.”

“I will not _betray_ her to the elves,” Thorin growled.

Of course he would see it that way; it was quite a good thing she wasn’t actually lost. There was a little twinge of hurt, though she felt immediately ridiculous for it. She thought he cared for her, a bit, perhaps, in the manner of a new friend, but she had no cause to expect more than that. And it was good to know he had such trust in her capability – very gratifying, that, really. That was what she ought to take to heart, out of all of this that she would have much preferred not to overhear. But what stuck in her chest was the realization that however much regard he might have for her, his hatred and distrust of the elves was greater.

“She wouldn’t want to die out there. For her bones to lie forever in that place.” Balin’s words were stark enough to make Bella’s breath hitch at the horror of the very idea – no, she would not. Better – better almost _anything_ than that.

“She will not.” Thorin sounded very, very sure, in a way that made a lump form in Bella’s throat. She did not want to be seen as weak, helpless, in need of rescue. She didn’t.

But it might have been nice to know that someone would bother to rescue her if she were. Well, Balin would. So there was that. And Thorin – Thorin had gone down over the side of a cliff and nearly fallen to his death, for her sake, back when he’d resented her very presence among them. It was the elves, that was all – he couldn’t be expected to think rationally around any elves, but especially not around the very elves who had betrayed his people. She couldn’t blame him for that, could she?

She told herself she _shouldn’t,_ but she very much _could,_ and hated the feeling of it in the pit of her stomach.

“You don’t know that,” Balin said flatly.

“I do know it,” Thorin insisted, then paused. His voice was subdued when next he spoke, as meek as she had ever heard him. “Balin, I would – I would know -”

Bella thought she could see the way down, and was rather desperate to reveal herself before she heard any more.

“You think you’d know if she died, laddie?” Balin asked, and his voice, too, had lost its edge.

Thorin did not reply; Bella hurried down winding, half-hidden steps, around a twist of root and stone.

“It’s a pretty notion,” Balin said gently, “but you and I both know the world’s not that kind.”

“It seems kinder to her,” Thorin answered quietly. “She’s lucky, Balin, and brave and quick-witted enough to make more of that luck than most could.”

“Aye,” Balin replied, and sighed, defeated. “That she is. That she certainly is. I hope you’re right.”

And then Bella was there, right outside Thorin’s cell, and she didn’t know what to do. There were no guards, she’d been checking and they’d been checking, eyes darting through their whole, rather revealing conversation. But how do you go about appearing out of thin air? If she whispered first, would they think her a ghost?

And Bella thought, a little vindictively, that it might well serve Thorin right if he did – just for a moment.

“Thorin,” she whispered.

His eyes rounded and searched frantically, his hands clutching the bars hard enough to make them creak. His face was a picture of tangled hope and dread, both plain as day and painfully desperate. “Bella? Where -?”

“Here,” she answered, fumbling in her haste to get the ring off her finger. Why had she done that? What a horrid thing to do, to frighten him like that! But as guilty as the look on his face made her feel, she couldn’t be entirely sorry – because he _had_ been frightened, in that moment when he couldn’t know if he spoke to her shade or if she was merely hidden. It made up, a bit, for what she’d heard before. “I’m right here.”

He sagged, when she came into view, his breath leaving him in a rush. Then an almost drunken smile, and one of his hands peeled itself from the bars to reach out between them toward her. She took his hand and tried not to wince at how tightly he clutched. His fingers were cold – of course they were, he was stripped to his underclothes, and accustomed to furs. Only then did a questioning frown begin to form on his face.

“My lady,” Balin asked, behind her. “How?”

Bella winced; well, it had to happen sooner or later, and she didn’t even know why she disliked the idea of the others knowing about her ring. The thing scared her, after what had happened in the forest, the mindless rage that the thought of its loss induced.

Still the words would not come; she could make something up, something about hobbits being quick and light on their feet, couldn’t she? If they were ever going to believe such a thing, they would now, in such dire circumstances.

“Miss Baggins?” Thorin’s voice, polite and proper again now he was over his shock - but though his grip on her gentled, he did not let go.

Why was she even thinking of lying to him? But her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She tightened her grasp on his hand, and saw his frown deepen. “There is.” She grimaced, and there was a wild pounding in her blood, _they might try to take it, it was hers, her own! What right did they have to know of it?_ And right along side that a terror of her own thoughts, which did not feel like they were her own at all. “That is to say.”

Thorin drew her hand in close to the bars and wrapped his other over her knuckles, sheltering it. “You’re shaking.”

“Yes, well, this is oddly difficult,” Bella snapped, and heard her voice crack in fear. “Don’t be angry, please?”

“I swear it,” he said.

“Good,” she said, and sighed. “I found something. In the goblin tunnels. Stole it, really, though it was already lost, I’d every right to -” Stop. Swallow. Breathe, or try to. “A – ring. Invisible. It – it can make me.”

“A magic ring, you say?” Balin said worriedly.

“Yes,” Bella gasped; there, it was out.

“It would prevent you from speaking of it,” Thorin concluded.

“Isn’t it odd?” Bella said, her voice higher than it ought to be. “To think of it that way – as if a ring could want anything on its own. It’s just a twist of metal.” But though it occurred to her to take it from her pocket and show it to them, she did not. She wasn’t actually sure how it had gotten into her pocket, between when she’d taken it from her finger and when Thorin had caught the hand that had worn it. Had she tucked it away first, before she reached for him?

“Troubling,” Balin answered, “not odd. Magic works the will of the one who crafted it.”

“A ring of invisibility,” Thorin said, and Bella saw the way he deliberately schooled his features – and behind them, his thoughts – into an attitude of confidence. “It would stand to reason that such a thing would seek to remain hidden itself – and yet our burglar found it.” And at that, a gentle, almost wondering smile for her. “We should not question such a gift.”

“Magic rings are not things to be taken lightly,” Balin warned.

“Do I seem to be taking it lightly?” Thorin scowled over Bella’s shoulder. “But it is a great boon to have such a thing, you cannot deny that.”

“No,” Balin answered, though he sounded far from convinced.

“Then let us waste no more time on borrowed fears,” Thorin said, and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, “while luck favors us, and there are plans to be made.”


	7. The Elven Dungeons, II

Explaining the ring grew less difficult with repetition, though it never became easy.

Dori responded as he was inclined to respond to anything – with suspicion. Ori was out-right awed, which did little to improve Dori’s view of the matter. Nori demanded the tale of its acquisition, which he found a great deal more entertaining than Bella thought the experience had been – but in the end he had praised her cleverness with a sharp-eyed look of approval, so perhaps his amusement could be forgiven.

Óin shared Balin’s concerns, but Glóin rather emphatically did not. He wanted to examine the craftsmanship of the thing, which had Bella skittling uneasily away to the next cell. His curiosity made her feel a vicious, snarling possessiveness that frightened her every bit as badly as the thought that if she passed the ring through the bars and into his hand, she would never get it back (and why was that thought so terrifying? But it was.) She seemed incapable of trust when it came to the ring; she could not bear the thought of anyone but her touching it. She didn’t even like them looking at it.

Which resulted in her nearly backing away right over the edge of the path, overwhelmed with the effort it took to contain her rage, when Kíli asked to try it on.

After that – Kíli’s cell being in plain view of most of the rest - it was all worried frowns, no matter how glad they were to see her or to have this advantage over the elves. It ought to have been rather heartwarming, really, that their concern for her nearly matched their desire for escape – but there was also the anxious dread, at the back of her mind, that their worry might lead them to try to take the ring from her.

The longer she wore it, the more it seemed to influence her thoughts – she felt, at once, a continuous, jittery horror at the thought of its loss, and a great desire to toss it down the first well or privy she could find. She loved it and hated it and wished she’d never found it and was more thankful than she could say that she had; what hope would they have now if she had not?

And she did have hope – to her own surprise, she had a fair degree of confidence in her ability to mount a rescue. The dungeons were isolated and the dwarves were the only prisoners, and the guards clearly resented their presence. She heard quite a lot of muttering about time wasted, and the state of the forest, and Thranduil’s relative competency (or rather, its lack) as a ruler. They brought the dwarves their meals twice a day, gave their cells a cursory glance to be sure they were not chipping away at the walls, and that was all. Add to that a discovery Bella made on the very first day – a way to exit the dungeons through the cellars (though the others were not going to like it) that, if they timed it right, wouldn’t arouse suspicion until well after they were long gone – and really, she thought it shouldn’t be too hard. If her idea worked, it would let them avoid any more trudging through that wretched forest, too. She was rather proud of herself. There was only one small problem with her plan.

She had no idea how to get the dwarves out of their cells.

The doors were iron, strong and securely mounted. The walls were solid rock. While that might not prove too much of an impediment to a dwarf with the right tools and a bit of time, it was doubtful that all of them could manage to carve their way through in the time between patrols with whatever tools she could manage to steal for them, and there would be simply no way to hide a dwarf-sized hole-in-progress from even the laziest of guards. She had acquired Nori a series of long, slender implements to have a go at the lock on his door, but it had proven too difficult for him – almost certainly enchanted, he’d said, with a great deal of scowling and wounded pride.

She needed the keys, that was just all there was to it – which meant waiting and watching for an opportune moment to steal them.

And waiting.

And _waiting_.

^*^*^*^

The dwarves decided after a few days – with the notable exception of Thorin, who continued to mostly shout obscenities when he thought any elf might be in hearing, and Balin, who mostly glowered disappointedly at Thorin - that the best way to pass the time was in the singing of bawdy tavern songs.

Dori refused to join in, and attempted to prevent Ori from doing so as well. This was a battle he was bound to lose, given how Fíli and Kíli egged Ori on – and then proceeded to mock him terribly for his voice (which was, Bella had to admit, more than a little hard on the ears). Ori seemed uncertain if he should be hurt about that, at first, until a few shouts from Nori about the honor of the sons of Ri had him singing all the louder, and then it turned into a contest to drown each other out.

Bella was happy to see them keeping their spirits up, but was going to blush whenever she heard the word ‘beard’ for the rest of her life.

Eventually it all grew too much for Dori, who caught sight of Bella resting in a sheltered alcove along the path with the ring off and cried out, _“There is a lady present!”_

If the volume he achieved with that proclamation was any indication, he could have won the contest of voices easily, had he chosen to join in. The others ceased in a disorderly lurch of sudden silence, save Óin, to whom Glóin had to explain the situation.

A loud exclamation of, “He didn’t!” followed Glóin’s muttered explanations, and then, “Have you got coal for brains?” shouted up at Dori, who looked suitably miserable. The rest all stood clutching the bars of their cells and exchanging wide-eyed, panicked looks.  While there were no guards present that could be seen, Dori had been _very_ loud. The now deafening silence stretched. 

“No there isn’t!” Kíli suddenly announced, and at the others’ unimpressed glares, and went on in a very smug tone, “Tauriel’s got patrol in the forest today, she’s not lurking about. Wouldn’t have thought you’d call an elf a lady, anyway.”

There was a collective slumping of shoulders and sigh of relief.

“Well, that’s -” Dori sputtered, finding himself abruptly in the awkward position of having to pretend a regard for courtesy to elves. “That is, even an elf is, well -”

Dwalin said something clearly derisive in Khuzdul that had Dori turning beet red and responding indignantly in the same tongue and, predictably, that set off Ori and then Glóin and soon it was a melee of insults being flung. Bella was beginning to pick up a few words of Khuzdul here and there – not a thing she intended to admit, seeing as it was entirely improper of her, as a non-dwarf – and was able to gather that most of what was being said pertained to who had the purest hatred of elves or, conversely, who was likely to want to do some of the things described in the tavern songs with elves.

Kíli was a trifle too enthusiastic in his participation, Bella thought, and his expression a bit too guarded. It had escaped no one's notice - unless you counted Kíli, who seemed oblivious to their noticing - that Tauriel's _lurking about_ involved less actual lurking and more sitting right outside Kíli's cell in plain view, their heads tipped together through the bars. They talked for hours on end. Bella might have thought it was sweet, in other circumstances - but as things were, it really couldn't end well at all.

“The Ballad of Durin the Deathless!” Ori suddenly blurted out, his reedy voice easily heard above the general din.

There was, for the second time, an abrupt quiet (except, again, for a few more insults from Óin).

“We could sing that,” Ori said, much more quietly, and sounding unsure. “That’d take up the time.”

There were mutterings, considering the idea.

“Why not?” Fíli asked.

“D’ya know the whole thing?” Bofur asked, sounding doubtful.

“Mahal, yes,” Kíli groaned. “In Khuzdul first and then Westron; we had tutors devoted to just that.”

“Could recite it in our sleep,” Fíli concurred.

“Pretty sure I _have_ ,” Kíli added.

“At least once or twice,” Fíli nodded.

“I read it myself,” Ori said, sounding even smaller.

“That’s a proper appreciation for culture,” Glóin responded, in his most approving paternal tone, which only worsened the look of chagrin on Ori’s face. “Khuzdul or Westron, lad?”

“Both?” Ori answered miserably.

“He’s very good with languages!” Dori announced, somewhere between proud and belligerent, and Ori looked like he wanted to disappear right into the stone.

“Khuzdul,” Dwalin said. “We sing it in Khuzdul.” When the others looked surprised at his contribution, he growled, “You want the elves learning it?”

Bella thought it likely the elves already knew it, many of them being fantastically old – much older than this feud – and keen historians, but she kept this opinion to herself.

“Is how it should be properly sung anyhow,” Glóin nodded. “Though –“ He stopped, and cast a significant look in Bella’s direction, which they all followed. “Be a shame to not – well - ”

“I could translate for -” Ori began.

“Practice!” Nori called out, giving his brother an exasperated look.

“Right!” Ori agreed hastily. “To practice!” And he gestured for Bella to come closer, which she did, slipping the ring back on as she left her sheltered spot and maneuvered her way up toward his cell.

To her surprise, it was Dwalin who began – he’d contributed to the bawdy singing mostly at the choruses and via raucous laughter, and Bella would never, ever have guessed that he had the rich, sonorous voice he used now in him. Glóin picked it up next, then Fíli, and soon the space was filled with deep voices, more chanting than singing. There was a resonating echo, and while their tavern songs had seemed to batter her eardrums, this sound wrapped around her and settled in her bones.

Somewhere around the third verse, Balin’s voice joined in from below, and then a few verses later, Thorin’s.

The singing, first the tavern songs and now this, was theoretically intended to irritate their captors – but Bella secretly hoped (still wanting to think well of elves in general) that the elves would appreciate hearing this for the privilege that it was.

^*^*^*^

The ballad of Durin the Deathless was _long_.

Long enough that, three days later, they were still singing it – and Ori told her they were barely a third of the way through. They’d set up a rotation, some singing while others slept or ate (it was, of course, of vital importance that it be sung with as much vigor as possible while the guards were about delivering their meals). Bella couldn’t sit and listen all the while – she had to follow the keeper of the keys whenever possible, keeping watchful for her chance – but she took a rest here and there, when whatever guard held the keys had them on his-or-her belt and was clearly unlikely to take them off any time soon.

Thus it was that during such a rest, when Ori happened to be sleeping and thus could not translate the chanting for her, she received her next bit of education in dwarrow culture.

“This would be a board,” Thorin said, sketching a grid on the floor just outside his cell with the stick of charcoal Bella had stolen. “A full sized board is forty-nine squares wide, but they are often smaller, for casual play. As you are a beginner to the game, we will start with fourteen.”

“I’m quite good at games,” Bella pointed out. “Don’t make it easy on my account.”

He flashed her a smile; a very rare thing, since their imprisonment. A rare enough thing even before then. “I do not intend to.”

“Best let him start small, my lady,” Balin suggested from his cell, to her back and across the way. “He’s a promising pupil, and he’s had years of practice.”

“What age must I attain before I cease to be your pupil in this?” Thorin grumbled, though it was fond and without true ire.

“Age has naught to do with it – all you’ve got to do is beat me,” Balin answered.

Bella looked back and forth between the two of them. “He’s never won?” she asked.

“I have won hundreds of times,” Thorin objected.

“Not seven in a row on a full board,” Balin said – sounding more than a bit smug, Bella thought. “That’s a conquest, we call it; seven battles won.”

“There were matches that had been going on for generations,” Thorin told her, “before the dragon. A few continued after, where both players lived, and could agree on their memories of the board – or agree to discard the most recent game.”

“Aye,” Balin said. “A great and noble thing to see, that was.”

Bella gave the unassuming squares sketched out on the stone an incredulous look.

“I wonder if it’s still there – that board you made when you were a lad,” Balin went on, voice soft with memory. “There was no gold in it, and it was tucked away in a drawer, the dragon may have let it be.”

Thorin snorted. “It’s that board you miss?”

“Yes,” Balin said firmly. “It is.”

And Thorin, somewhat obscured from Balin’s view by Bella, ducked his head and looked both embarrassed and pleased. It made something lurch in her chest.

What he said, voice gruff and unaffected, was, “He will not tell you that he inherited a board, and a match played on it, from his uncle – and won, in the span of a handful of years. After that, he insisted that the board was too fine to be squandered on just any opponent, and would not begin a match upon it unless a player was able to beat him seven times in a row on a smaller board. Which none could do.”

“It was an entirely reasonable requirement,” Balin insisted. “That board was a family heirloom, it would have been a travesty to waste it on an unworthy opponent.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Bella said, “if starting a game might have meant the board was in use for the next hundred years.”

“You see?” Balin said. “Your lady understands.”

Thorin shot Balin a look over her shoulder that Bella couldn’t entirely decipher, at that – _your lady?_ And she tried not to hold her breath, waiting to see if Thorin would correct him. Or should she? She was most certainly not Thorin’s anything, no such thing had ever been discussed between them, much less announced, and it seemed presumptuous to just accept such a designation. But to reject it would be – well, a rejection, where she did not intend one.

“An heirloom?” Thorin said, watching Bella’s face closely enough to make her flush and turn her eyes back to the stone and the sketched squares. “That board was a _legend_.”

As if nothing of any import at all had been said.

What was she to make of that?

“It was carved of ruby and sapphire set in mithril, made in Khazad-dûm before its fall,” Thorin went on. “Before mithril became too precious to use for the creation of anything but armor. There were few older, or finer.”

“And I’d like to have it back,” Balin conceded, “But I’d like your little quartz and silver board back too, all the same. It was very nice work, for one so young.”

“I was little more than a toddler,” Thorin told her, “Scarcely old enough to be trusted with heated metal. The stones wobble. But it is that board of which he speaks fondly, as if I’ve given him no better gift since. There was a set of knives, you may recall,” he called over her head.

“Very fine knives,” Balin allowed, in a tone that made it quite clear he still preferred the wobbly-stoned gameboard. “An honor to be given such a thing, crafted by the prince’s own hands. Many a dwarf envied me those knives.”

Thorin scowled at him; Bella looked hurriedly back to the floor when his gaze settled back on her. It wouldn’t do for Thorin to see her watching him in the way she was afraid she was.

What would she give, to be one of them? To be his lady in truth, and not only by some slip of the tongue - to be able to mock him kindly, and be the subject of such fond irritation?

Enough to make her shrink from the thought as if in anticipation of a terrible blow; he was a king, and she was a fool.

“So how do you play?” Bella asked, and if her voice came out a bit strange, he did not seem to notice.

“Your goal is to have seven of your soldiers standing in a row – they ought to be carved tokens, or at the least small stones, but here we’ll just mark where they stand -”

^*^*^*^

On day six of their recitation, Bella asked, ““Is it all true?” She was tucked as close to Thorin’s side as she could be with the bars of his cell between them. It was cold at night, in the dungeons, and lacking in soft places to sleep. Above them the ballad of Durin the Deathless went on.

The question seemed to surprise him, and he thought a moment before he answered.  “So I was taught,” he said, voice low and weary, head tipped back against the stone.

“You don’t believe it?”

Again he hesitated, his expression full of weighty, troubled thoughts, and it struck her that she would have seen none of it in his face just a few months past. She’d thought him inscrutable, and cold.

“I cannot say,” Thorin finally answered. “I have seen the gates of Khazad-dûm with my own eyes, though not its depths. We have the words of our ancient kings in their own hand – or had. I saw these things, in my youth, and believed the tales behind them without thought.”

“But now you doubt them?” Bella asked softly – an impertinent question, by any measure, and yet it did not seem so there, with her head resting against his shoulder through the bars.

It took him another long moment to speak. “Now I doubt many things.” And then he was quiet again.

Bella did not press further. She shifted and fussed with her rumpled coat, trying to find some comfort. Thorin turned his gaze to her, at that, frowning.

“It’s fine,” she said.

“You would rest easier elsewhere,” he said. “There must be closets full of linens somewhere, where you could make a softer bed.”

“No I wouldn’t,” Bella answered. “I suppose there are, but I wouldn’t.” She offered no reason for it, and hoped he wouldn’t ask for one. Friends, after all, might sit shoulder to shoulder, and take comfort in that. That required no great explanation.

What she wanted was the smell of him, truly wretched though it was with weeks between any of them and their last bath, and faintly soured by some lingering taint of Mirkwood. There was still something of it that was not just sweat and filth, but unique to him, and it meant safety and comfort to some deep part of her mind. She recognized it in that hazy place on the edge of sleep, that grey twilight between nightmares and waking, and was soothed.

There was no getting around the intimacy of _that_. It was not, at all, the sort of thing one could tell a friend.

“As it please you,” Thorin said, and Bella was too wary of her own expression to examine his too closely. “You are more than welcome, so long as I am not keeping you from your rest.”

“No,” Bella said, small-voiced but, yes, pleased. More than welcome; that was a thing she’d treasure.

And then quiet, or at least their own little sphere of it, though the chanting continued on unabated above them, and Balin was snoring.

She was on the edge of sleep when Thorin said, “It is said that Durin is reborn in times of great need,” and she must have startled at the sound of his voice, because his next words were, “Forgive me, I woke you.”

“No, no,” Bella insisted, though the bleariness of her own voice must have given away the lie. “What – Durin? You were saying?”

“I should let you rest.”

“You should not offer the start of tale and then withhold the rest of it,” she countered, lifting her head to fix him with the most imperious look she could manage while still climbing into wakefulness.

“Not a tale,” he said, with a nod up toward his singing kinsmen, and a wry smile. “That you have already. Only my own thoughts, poor things that they are at this moment.”

She wriggled into more of an upright position, ignoring his look of protest. “Well, I would have them anyway.”

He seemed on the verge of refusing and insisting that she sleep – as if he could order her mind to restfulness, now that her curiosity had been stirred. But then he nodded acquiescence and, after casting a wary look in Balin’s direction, said, “After the dragon . . . there were many who hoped.”

“That Durin would be reborn?”

“As our histories would have it, Durin could return to this world only through the birth of a son of his own line,” Thorin said. “His direct descendant.” He paused, watching her to see if she understood.

Well then. She was certainly wide awake now. “You - ?” And she had no idea how to complete the thought. A son? She was reasonably sure he had no son – he couldn’t have simply failed to mention a child for months on end, could he? But if there was even the possibility of a child – well, a child almost certainly meant a wife.

Her heart was suddenly hammering painfully in her chest; what a fool, what an utter, sad fool she was.

But what Thorin said, barely louder than a whisper, was, “How could I take the weight of a kingdom, the hopes of all its people, and set that on the shoulders of a newborn babe? And if he was no one but himself, not our first father come again but only – only my son. Or a daughter. What then of our people’s hopes?”

“Oh,” Bella said, and her stomach swooped. “So then. You . . . didn’t?”

“I would take no wife and father no child while we remained in exile,” Thorin said. “So there is the answer to your question – perhaps some younger part of me still believes, or wants to, but it is not enough. Not enough.”

Bella had no adequate response to that, and the silence stretched until Thorin spoke again, even more softly. “Better that the blame should fall to me, than a child who had not asked to be born. Better that I should doubt alone than our people lose all faith. Whether that is right or wrong, I do not know, but it was not in me to do otherwise.”

She would not ask if there had been anyone he might have wished to marry, had things been different. She would _not_.

The silence stretched. Thorin said nothing, gave her no inquiring looks, but Bella eventually realized that while she was absorbed in gloomy ponderings as to whether his heart was already given elsewhere, he’d been waiting for something from her.

Of course he was, when he’d told her something like that. But what did she know of the beliefs of dwarves? She’d have liked very much to assure him he’d done right, but any such reassurance would have to ring hollow, wouldn’t it? Maybe he had, maybe he hadn’t, and it was all far too tangled with her own selfish hopes for her to even pretend objectivity.

“You don’t doubt alone,” she said, before she think better of it. It was the only true thing she had to say. “Not that I doubt, that is – I can’t doubt what I never believed, not that I wouldn’t have believed - or would, that’s not what I meant. All I meant is that I’m not a dwarf, obviously, so I don’t know,” she concluded determinedly. “What I do know is that your people could not ask for a more devoted leader, and that . . . that I am your friend, and think well of you for it. For whatever that may be worth.”

It took him far too long to answer, which perhaps she deserved, with how she’d inadvertently made him wait on her judgment.

But what he said, at last, was, “It is worth more than I can say.”

And that was something, wasn’t it?

^*^*^*^

The full recital of the Ballad of Durin the Deathless took almost precisely seven days, which was apparently right and proper and how it was meant to go. It was, by then, the fourteenth day since their capture. The elves’ festival (Mereth Nuin Giliath, the feast of starlight, Kíli said; the rest were vocally unimpressed with this bit of knowledge) reached its peak, and the keys were finally, _finally_ left unattended.

^*^*^*^


	8. The Elven dungeons, III - a Kili/Tauriel Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I told you that you wouldn't be getting this in order! And just to confuse you more, this is from Kili's perspective.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I told you that you wouldn't be getting this in order! And just to confuse you more, this is from Kili's perspective.
> 
> Also, was meant to be entirely fluffy. I am apparently incapable of that. Not that this is news to anyone who knows me.
> 
> ^*^*^*^

“Just how long does this feast go on?” Kíli asked, when Tauriel was again patrolling the dungeons, on the second night of their captivity.

She gave him a suspicious look.

“I’m curious!  It’s boring in here.”

“Mereth nuin Giliath begins the first night after the moon is full, and concludes when the moon is dark - when only the stars light the sky.  That is the eve of greatest celebration,” she told him.

“So nearly a fortnight, then.  And it gets louder?”

She smiled, just a little.  “Much louder.”  

“Wouldn’t have guessed you elves had it in you,” he said, at which she rolled her eyes and walked on.

Thorin didn’t curse at her with quite the enthusiasm he had for the male guards, though Kíli was uncertain if that was actually to do with her being female or more related to the fact that she actually answered his insults.   In some form of elvish, which he may or may not have understood - Kíli didn’t.  It was fair, he supposed, given Thorin’s invective was mostly in Khuzdul.  

He might hate elves, but Uncle Thorin respected anyone who put up a good fight

Once she finished making her rounds, Tauriel came back and, without prompting, sat beside his cell.

“Will you tell me more of your travels?” she asked, as though that was perfectly natural - as though their long talk the previous night had not been a bit like a strange dream.  

And Kíli did not, for a moment, have any idea what to tell her.  There was something in her face - something both eager and uncertain, and it made him glad even though he knew it shouldn’t.  

“If you don’t -”

“We traveled with a circus, once,” Kíli blurted out hastily, because she was moving to get up, to leave, and he didn’t want that.  He should, but he didn’t.  

“A circus,” she repeated, in a way that made him wonder if she actually knew what a circus was.  

“They had a man who could swallow fire, and a tame bear and everything,” Kíli said, “There were these girls, sisters, I think, three of them, who could climb right up on top of each other with the second standing on the first one’s head, and the third on the second, like that, and walk around and dance that way.  And a man with just one arm who juggled knives - that wasn’t how he lost the arm, mind, that was only -“

^*^*^*^

“I had no idea dwarves had such a love of song,” Tauriel told him - he had stopped singing when he saw her coming, a little embarrassed.  It had seemed a great idea when it was some other guard they were trying to annoy, but he didn’t really want to be shouting out tavern songs full of obscene double-meanings in front of her.  

“Got to pass the time somehow,” he said, and shrugged.  

She seemed less annoyed and more amused, though, so that was . . . something that shouldn’t make him as relieved as it did.  

“Don’t suppose the, ah, tune, is . . . elves probably don’t have songs like this, do you?”

She tilted her head at him, and there was suddenly a gleam in her eyes, though the rest of her face was impassive.  

The others were still singing - all the louder, even, on account of Kíli having stopped - and it was a struggle not to blush or avert his eyes or stammer apologies.  

She was a soldier, anyway, wasn’t she?  Girl or no, a soldier would have heard worse before.

But she talked about starlight filling the air and the purity of memory and she was just so - so -

“I must remind myself that dwarvish women have beards,” Tauriel said, after a moment, her voice curiously light and devoid of inflection.  “It’s clever, with that in mind - but you see, for an elf, it really makes very little sense.  In either meaning.”  

She gave him a positively wicked little smile and one raise, challenging brow, before walking away, leaving his thoughts spinning - in either meaning?  So did that mean - that elves - didn’t -?  What would it look like without -?

And he was blushing, damn it all.  Imagining, and blushing, and that round of whatever-they-were-playing-at _definitely_ went to her.

^*^*^*^

The next night he could barely look at her, which seemed to amuse her to no end.  That wouldn’t do, it would not do at all - he had his pride.  He just had to start up a conversation like . . . normal?  Like whatever it had been, before, that wasn’t anything like normal, but was also not him cowering, red-cheeked as a beardless babe, in his cell.  

“Those spiders, though,” Kíli called after her, when next she passed, shouting to be heard over the continued raucous singing of the rest of the company.  He could have beaten his own brains in on the bars at the idiocy of that as a greeting - _those spiders_ , really?  “Nasty business.”

Tauriel turned back around, slowly, surprised and caught off-guard.   

“Can see how they’d be a bit of work to be rid of,” he said, with an air of completely fabricated experience - he knew wolves, and orcs and wargs, and bands of thieves, but giant spiders?  Who ever heard of giant spiders?  “If you hired a company of Dwarvish guards, though, experienced fighters like my brother and me?  We’d have ‘em cleared out in a fortnight.”  And he nodded with utter, glib confidence.  

“Yes,” Tauriel said, with a raised brow and a smirk, ”Of course.  You were doing so well when my troop came upon you.”

“Now, that is unfair,” Kíli objected - though it was completely fair, and they both knew it.  “You caught us off guard!  How were we meant to concentrate on the spiders when you lot were ready to shoot us full of arrows?”

“We would not have done,” Taurial said, “had you not greeted us no more warmly than the spiders.”

“Thought it was because we were trespassing,” Kíli objected.  “Thought that was why we’re in here.”  He knocked on the bars.

“Well, yes,” Tauriel conceded.  “But - the spiders, we would not -”  And she shut her mouth in a grim line, which Kíli took as acknowledgement that perhaps they _should_ not have treated dwarves as enemies when they _could_ have been fighting the spiders together, but they very much _had_.

“I’m good with a bow, you know,” Kíli insisted.  “Not bad with knives, either - it’s sought-after work, being a merchant’s guardsman.”  

“Of course,” Tauriel acknowledged, suddenly apologetic - and strangely, absurdly, _adorably_ sincere.  “I meant no insult; the spiders are, as you say, a nasty business.  Many have fallen to them who were both skilled and brave.”

And now he felt like an ass for his careless declaration that dwarves could dispose of them with ease.  

“Comes down to luck, sometimes,” he said, and hoped she understood it for an apology.  “No matter how good you are.”

“Yes.”  And she sighed, and looked upward, toward the sounds of elvish merriment that could be heard even over the closer cacophony of dwarvish voices.  “That is a terrible thing, but true.”

And then her eyes were back on him, weighing and judging and hovering on the edge of decision - of trust.  He held his breath.  

“I would track them to their source,” she said, sitting on the steps outside his door and leaning close.  “It is the only way we will ever be truly rid of them - and I am convinced that it must also be the source of the great sickness that has come over our land.”

“Sounds sensible,” Kíli agreed.  “Why don’t you, then?”

Her face closed off again, grew conflicted and frustrated and a little frightened.

“Never mind that,” he hurried to amend.  “We’ll just say you would if you could.  I know you would.”

“Do you?” she said, relaxing, and a small smile graced her lips - doubtful, but also amused.  “Do you know me so well, then, after a handful of days?”

“Sometimes you just know, about a person,” Kíli insisted.  “Don’t you think?  And I know you’d never tolerate those foul things in your lands, if you could do anything about it.”

A hint of her earlier fright passed across her face, before she hid it away.  It wasn’t right, Kíli thought, that someone so clearly brave and honorable should have to be afraid of falling into treachery just for speaking the truth.  Her loyalty to her king was admirable as far as that went, sure, but her king was an ass, and a fool besides, and for someone like _her_ to be trapped in the service of someone like _that_ \- well, it just wasn’t right.

“I would not,” she whispered, like a confession.  “There are none here who would.  What you must think of us, that we do.”  

“Tell me,” Kíli said, side-stepping that question, because truly, he didn’t think all too highly of elves in general, and these elves - aside from her, of course - were doing little to improve his opinion.  “Tell me what you’d do, if it were yours to decide.”

She eyed him warily.

“What’s the worst I could do with it, hrmm?” he asked.  “Take you strategy and go kill the spiders myself?”

She sighed.  “True enough.”  Then, quieter still.  “Would you?”

“Once we’ve - ah - well, once we’re done with - what we’re doing?  Sure,” Kíli said.  “Sounds like a noble endeavor to me.”

She smiled - just a simple, pleased smile, and it made something in his chest clench.  “It would be.”

“So let’s hear it, then,” Kíli said, grinning back.  “And when you’ve done, I’ll tell you how we dwarves would go about it - that is to say, how to do it properly.”

“Is that so?”

“It _is_ so.”

And Maker help him, he’d slay every spider in the world just to keep that look of defiance - and a certain hint of mischief - on her face.  She didn’t belong here, guarding prisoners, patrolling borders - a bloody waste, that was.  She belonged with a company like theirs on some grand quest, or with Fíli and him on the road - improvising, living by their wits.

He thought, as she spoke, that she could belong in Erebor, which would need its share of brave and clever folk to see it returned to its glory - and Kíli knew himself for a fool, knew he would inevitably pay in heartbreak for such thoughts, but could not, just then, bring himself to regret it.

^*^*^*^

She was gone for a day or two, not up celebrating with her kin but out patrolling in the forest.  (Kíli had noticed, by then, that she never seemed to take part in the celebration - not that he could account for her every moment, but she talked of patrols, and she was gone long enough to rest, and she was back there, in the dungeons.  He couldn’t figure in a time that could have involved drunken merriment.)

When she returned, the singing had changed to the Ballad of Durin.

And the look on Tauriel’s face, to hear it - it was close, very close, to the look she’d worn when she spoke of starlight.

“What does it mean?” she asked, in a hush, and when he opened his mouth to explain that he couldn’t answer, said, “No, I should not have asked, it is sacred to you.  A mystery.  I can hear it in your voices.”  

“It is, a bit,” Kíli agreed, though he honestly wanted her to be able to understand - for which _thought_ Uncle Thorin would kill him, never mind if he acted on the impulse.  

“Is it sad?” she asked, oh so softly, eyes round.  

“Not all of it,” he told her.  “It’s not meant to be.”  

She nodded, and then turned her eyes from the echoing chasm between paths, to his face.  Her look was imploring.

“You were singing, before I came.”

“You want me to?” he asked, “I still can’t . . . I mean, I know the words in common, but I shouldn’t -”

“No, no, just as you were,” she hurried to assure him.  “I would not wish to -”  And she stopped, an awkward, thwarted expression taking over her face.

“Trespass?” Kíli offered, with a quirk of his lips.  

But at that all the wonder left her face and she just looked so utterly miserable that he would have handed her the keys to Khazad-dûm if only she’d stop looking that way.  

“Just a joke,” he said, and for once he was utterly somber.  “Truly.  I don’t blame you for any of this.”

She looked away, and her face, in profile, was unreadable.  

Not knowing what else to do, and because she’d asked, he picked up the next verse and added his voice to the chanting of his kinsmen.  

He knew the words well enough that they required no thought, which left him able to study her - her closed eyes, her chin tipped back, the way her hands curled into fists and her fingertips dug at the stone of the step on which she sat.  The straightness of her spine, and the faint tremor of her breathing.  The way her chest rose and fell - and well, yes, that was a pleasant view, but that wasn’t what he saw - he saw the deep, shuddering way she inhaled, as if she could drink in the sound of their voices around her.

Sacred, she had called it - had somehow felt, known.  A mystery.

Like starlight, like memory, precious and pure.

Like a feast for the famished, Kíli realized, watching her, and it made his heart ache.

^*^*^*^

“Again?” Kíli asked, frowning, when Tauriel returned the next night to patrol the dungeons.  “I mean no insult, it’s not that I’m not happy to see you, but aren’t they going to let you have at least one night off to enjoy the party?”

The Ballad continued on, but Kíli - well, Kíli was theoretically meant to be sleeping, at the moment, it wasn’t his turn to sing.  

“I chose this watch, for the duration of the feast - here, or in the forest,” Tauriel told him.  “I am Captain; it is within my authority to decide such a thing.”

Kíli felt something within his chest leap, and silently called himself seven kinds of fool for it.  It was not for his sake, of course it wasn’t, why would it be?  “Letting the other guardsmen enjoy the celebration?” he guessed.  “Good of you.”

“Yes,” she said, though there was something odd in her voice when she spoke, and half a breath later, she was blurting out, “No.  That was not the reason at all.  I asked for this watch because I could not _bear_ it.”

“But I thought it meant so much to you,” Kíli said, bewildered at the sudden fury in her voice.  “The star -”

“You have seen what has become of our lands!” Tauriel snapped.  “The evil that festers here, unchecked!  Could you celebrate, when all that you held dear was so degraded and befouled?  Can you even imagine -”  

But then she stopped herself, and her eyes went round and mortified.

“You are of Erebor,” she breathed, and swallowed audibly.  “I did not mean - of _course_ you - forgive me.”  

“Hey, no,” Kíli said, crowding as close to the bars as he could while she backed away, eyes averted - if he could, he’d have reached out and taken her hand, maybe even put his arms around her in comfort, but he couldn’t, and probably that ought to have taught him something, but he didn’t care.  “It’s different, for me, at least.  I wasn’t born there.  It’s not like you can ever really forget, but you can’t dwell on it all the time either, yeah?  The way I figured it, it made no difference to the dragon one way or another if we were happy or sad or angry all the time - it wasn’t as though we could kill it with tears, so may as well laugh to spite it.”  

She stared, breathing a little raggedly.  

“But like I said, it’s different,” Kíli went on.  “It wasn’t in front of my face all the time, and no one was asking me to sit by and do nothing about it.  So no apologies.”

“I should go,” she said, and all but ran away.

^*^*^*^

The next time he saw her was several days later, and her face was as hard as it had been when first they met.  

“I cannot let you go,” she said, without preamble.  “I am loyal to my king.”

 _Who wouldn’t deserve you if he tried for a thousand years,_ Kíli thought bitterly, but what he said, a little desperately, was, “'Course not.  That’d take all the fun out of escaping.”

She looked equal parts exasperated, angry, and like she might cry.  “You are not going to escape.  None ever have.”

“I’ll try to make sure it’s when you’re not on guard,” Kíli offered, heart hammering in his chest, though his expression was carefree and cocksure.  “So you’re not blamed.  Is there anyone you’d like to take down a peg or two?  Any grudges?  We can try to escape on that one’s watch.”

“Kíli -”  The anger was fading, but the exasperation and the threat of tears were still there.  

“A wager,” Kíli threw out.

She hovered on the edge of . . . he didn’t know what.  Something.  She was about to fall away from him.  

“A wager?” she asked, so very carefully.

“On whether or not we escape.”

“That hardly seems fair,” she said, and deflated a bit, with it.  He didn’t know whether to be happy or sad, because she wasn’t running away, that horrible closed-off expression was gone from her face - but she was defeated, and she should never, ever be that.  

“If we don’t escape, for . . oh, I don’t know how long,” Kíli said.  “Until your king lets us go or we all die of old age, I guess, though you might have a hard time holding me to the terms of the wager if it goes that way.  But assuming I’m still alive and not feeble with age, I’ll owe you a boon, anything you wish.”

“And if you - you _will not_ escape,” she insisted.

“And if we do,” Kíli persisted, “then you’ll owe me.”

“Any boon you wish?” she repeated warily.  

“Friendship,” Kíli said, and let something of the great tangle of feeling in his breast out into his voice.  “If we escape, then I win the wager, and you - you’ll owe me your friendship.  You’ll remain my friend, and I’ll remain yours.  Fair?”

For a moment he thought she wouldn’t answer - but then she said, “Fair,” so quietly he could barely hear, and smiled.  It was a soft, sad, hopeless sort of smile - but wondering, at the same time.  As though she knew that if he could, he'd have given her the stars.  That - her knowing - that would have to do, for now.  


	9. On the shores of the Long Lake / Bard's barge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER SPECIFIC WARNING: There is some fairly extensive - but completely non-graphic - discussion of rape in here, specifically within the context of the dwarves having been a displaced people. No specific past experience is mentioned, just a general cynicism and Thorin being very cognizant of the threat of sexual violence for Bella. 
> 
> (My characters do not even actually use the word 'rape' once, because having them dance around the subject seemed appropriate to the context. For myself, I flat refuse to use 'noncon' anymore. Because seriously, WTF does that even mean? Why are we trying to make that sound nicer, or more clinical? Call it what it is.)
> 
> ^*^*^*^

“I saw what you did for the elven prince,” Bella said.

Thorin had one of her numb, battered hands in his, feeling carefully at the joints. His expression was dark, and his eyes kept shifting between her fingers and the hunched forms of his nephews, who were huddled together with Oin. Then he would look to the cliffs and the trees, sharp-eyed and afraid – and back again to her hand, when he saw nothing, and could do nothing. His own hands were caught in fits of shivers that came and went, though the rest of him was steady as stone. 

“I did nothing for the elven prince, save curse his ancestors,” he said. 

“You saved his life.” 

“I slew an orc,” Thorin growled, but he remained gentle as he straightened her smallest finger. Bella wasn’t sure which ought to frighten her more – that it hurt, or that it didn’t. The abraded skin stung, and there was a vague, deep ache, but beyond that, nothing. Yet she couldn’t seem to unbend any of her fingers on her own. 

“If it was to his good forture, so be it. I would not allow an orc live merely to spite an elf.” 

“You threw away a sword,” Bella insisted. “And meaning no offense to your skill in battle, but there were quite a lot of orcs, and quite a few of them lived. You chose that one, at that moment, when in the next he would have chopped a certain elf in half like a log.” 

Thorin made a noise of disgust. “I would not have kept an orcish blade.” 

He laid her hand between his and slowly forced her fingers straight. That did hurt, but she clenched her jaw against any sound of pain; Thorin looked grim enough already, and besides that, what right had she to complain when Kili had a great hole in his leg? She could hear bitten-off curses and strangled grunts of pain from where Kili sat, and Thorin’s shoulders tensed at each sound. 

“You didn’t seem to mind orcish blades in the fight.” 

“I didn’t mind killing their makers with them,” Thorin countered. “Skewering them upon their own poor excuse for steel. It is as much as such a blade, or such a creature, deserves.” 

“Thorin.” 

He looked up from under his furrowed brows at her. 

“It was a noble thing to do,” Bella said softly. Then, with a raised brow and half a not-very-hopeful smile, “Maybe he’ll learn something from your example. Treat the next dwarves he meets better.” 

“You think too highly of elves,” Thorin grumbled, and began to gently rub her hand between his palms. 

“Less so after meeting these,” Bella conceded. “But I think highly of you, for saving the life of an elf, when you think so little of them. You are a good person, Thorin, and will be a good king.” 

“Your hands are undamaged, so far as I can tell, though I am no healer,” Thorin answered, in place of a response, but his head ducked lower, his tangled hair falling over his face and obscuring it from view – which told her near as much as his expression might have, Bella thought. “Stiff and numb with the cold and being clenched too tightly for too long, but I believe you will regain use of them soon.” 

“I can feel that one again, a little,” Bella told him – which was a nice way to say that it was beginning to feel a bit like like it was full of tiny shards of glass, as it warmed between his hands. That was a good thing, if not a pleasant one. 

“Good,” Thorin said. “You should –“

And then there was the twang of a bowstring. 

^*^*^*^

The next time she met a stranger and it was not at the point of some weapon, Bella thought, it was going to seem positively odd and unnatural. But eventually weapons were put aside and a bargain was reached for their passage to Laketown. The bargeman – Bard, she learned, with no reference to the trade of the same name, she was assured that she didn’t want to hear him sing – seemed a decent enough sort. 

All such casual conversation tapered to a halt as their way grew thick with fog and the jagged edges of ruins began to appear from the surface of the lake. As they drew closer to Laketown, a tension grew between them – and, Bella realized, a good portion of it seemed to have to do with her. 

Bard began to watch her more closely than any of the rest, his eyes returning to her again and again, and his frown deepening each time. Thorin was never more than a pace or two from her, and when he caught Bard’s unreadable looks, he returned them with blatant hostility. None of this was very sublte at all, and seeing it, one by one the others found some reason to place themselves between her and the bargeman. Bella found herself shuffled backwards until she was at the opposite end of the barge with a wall of dwarves in front of her. 

She caught Thorin’s eye, hoping an expression of aggrieved confusion might prompt an explanation or two. 

He stepped closer, and in a low voice, said, “I do not like the way he watches you.” 

Bella blinked. That was – she wasn’t sure what that was. It wasn’t as though she’d never been cautioned as to the dangers of strange men; in the year after her parents passed, when her assorted relations had still held the hope that she might be persuaded from the clear insanity of staying on at Bag End all alone, it had sometimes seemed like no one wanted to speak to her about anything else. She’d grown accustomed to ignoring those dire warnings; she locked her door and her windows, and she carried a stout stick when she went out walking, and that was just that. 

Now, though – now she’d spent the better part of a year traveling in the company of a bunch of dwarves who she’d met the day before she left with them. She’d fought goblins and orcs and giant spiders. To have to worry, now, after all that, about the lingering gaze of some strange man – 

It was as infuriating as it was ridiculous, and what was worse was that she couldn’t quite dismiss it – her eyes shifted to Bard (who was frowning in her direction again, and they both looked hastily away), and he seemed suddenly even larger in her sight, monstrously tall, his hands and feet huge. 

“I don’t think -” Bella stopped, wet her tongue, tried to piece together her jagged thoughts. “That’s kind of you to be concerned, but I don’t believe – I don’t know why he keeps frowning at me, but I don’t think it’s anything like . . . that.” 

She didn’t, truly – but now there was the whisper of it at the back of her mind, and oh how she hated it. 

Thorin watched her closely, and what he saw did not seem to please him. “You lead a sheltered life, in your Shire.” 

“Yes, and it’s not as though I’ve seen many dangers since I left,” Bella snapped, stung. “Clearly I know nothing of the world.” 

“You don’t,” Thorin retorted, but he looked miserable about it, “Not of this, and I would not see that changed. We learned, in our wandering. The race of Men have little honor when it comes to the daughters of other races.” 

Bella swallowed the angry words that had been on her lips, taken aback. 

This was not about him imagining her as weak or helpless; this was about his having been so. 

And he thought – how sheltered had _he_ been, Bella suddenly wondered, before Erebor fell? If he thought that a life in the Shire, peaceful though it was, would have shielded her from all such things. 

“You needn’t fear,” Thorin hurried to say, misreading the look on her face entirely. “Every one of this company would die before allowing such a thing to befall you.” 

Green Lady save them, that was _not_ the reassurance he meant it to be – and never mind that it had been her saving them, as she recalled it, more often than not of late. 

“Thorin,” Bella began, very carefully, “There are evil folk of that sort everywhere. I’m not so sheltered as all that.” 

He looked disbelieving, and she didn’t know whether she wanted to throttle him or wrap him up in a blanket and hide him away. Did he think that Erebor, once reclaimed, would be a perfect idyll where no such thing could ever occur? Oh, she hoped not. She didn’t want to see that belief shattered, and it would be. 

“Can I not defend myself?” Bella pressed. “Have I not proven that?” 

“You can, and you have, many times over,” Thorin conceded, and had the good grace to look a bit shamed that she’d had to ask the question. “You should not need to.” 

“No, I shouldn’t, but I will if I must,” Bella said, then blurted,“You’re not to die on my account, any of you!” 

He gave her a wry half a smile, at that. “I will endeavor not to.” 

“Good.” 

“Do not think that I doubt you,” he said, more softly. “Not your strength or your courage. I would be glad to have you at my side in battle, never doubt that.” 

“Then why is this different?” Bella asked, and couldn’t entirely keep the the hurt or the aggrevation out of her voice. He couldn’t know it had been held over her head all her life – the bad end that wild, foolish girls should expect. 

He seemed to struggle to find the words. “One expects foul creatures to do foul things,” he said, his brows drawn together as if he did not entirely understand himself. He spoke in a hush, the words for her ears alone. “What a goblin does is in its nature, and orcs are not natural at all, but twisted things. The world is as it is, and while I would see you safe from all of that, it does not . . . offend me,” he concluded, shaking his head, “that you should need to take up arms against such evil. That is the duty and the burden of all free people, to stand against the dark. But that you should need to defend yourself from one who should know shame, and honor, and has forsaken both – that you should have to fight not because you are good and a champion of good, the natural enemy of evil, but because another sees you as _nothing_ , would _use_ you - that is not to be borne.” 

“Oh,” Bella said, and found herself at a loss for any further response, though the look Thorin was giving her was almost hunted – as if he waited for her to pass some judgment. “Well. Yes. I agree there, actually, just . . . I still can. Defend myself. It’s only – they wanted me to give up my home, and it’s – it’s a bit of a sore subject. My . . . virtue, though I always thought that was a stupid way to put it.” 

“Who wanted you to give up your home?” Thorin demanded, in a way that suggested they would be added to the list of foes he intended to fight on her behalf. Part of her wanted to roll her eyes, but another part felt a wobbly sort of gratitude that threatened to spill into tears. 

“My relations, the Baggins side,” Bella said. “It was dreadfully improper, you see, me living there all alone – a young woman. The only time they weren’t warning me just what was bound to happen to me was when they were whispering behind my back about what I was surely doing.” 

Thorin looked a bit like he wanted to murder someone. After a long moment of tight-jawed scowling, he finally said, “I wish I could tell you that you would have been treated more fairly among dwarves.” 

Bella sighed. “But it’s just the way the world is everywhere.” 

And then Bofur was crying out that they were about to run aground on some bit of ruin – and Bella would have been glad for that to be the end of that topic. 

But, of course, it wasn’t. 

There was still Bard, and his frowning, which eventually coalesced into an expression of grim determination. “I’ll speak plainly,” were his first words, and in Bella’s experience, that never bode well. “You’re asking me to bring you into my home.” 

“You agreed to aid us,” Thorin said, with no small degree of warning in his tone. 

“Aye, I did,” Bard acknowledged, “And I will, if you can explain her.” And he nodded in Bella’s direction. 

There was a heartbeat in which no one said a word, though every last one of the dwarves got to their feet. 

“I don’t know who you meant to fool with the clothes she’s wearing, but no one’s going to mistake her for a boy,” Bard went on. “She’s no dwarf, and so no kin of yours, and there is no ring on her finger nor bead in her hair. So I ask you – what is she to you?” 

“She is _right here,_ and can answer for herself!” Bella exclaimed, but Bard didn’t even look at her, his eyes on Thorin. 

“If I thought she were not among you of her own free will, you’d all be at the bottom of the lake by now,” Bard said – an answer to her words, but not for her, oh no, of course not. 

“You – you dare imply -” Dori began to sputter, and couldn’t seem to finish, which was just absurd, it was plain as day what was being implied. 

“I have daughters,” Bard said, voice flat and hard. “Maybe I can’t shelter them much, but there are things I’d not have them see. Nor have tales told of who I brought beneath the roof where they also sleep.” 

“We are escorting the lady home,” Thorin all but growled. 

“Home,” Bard echoed. “To the Iron Hills? A strange place for a halfling to call home.” 

“That is no concern of yours,” Thorin said, in as dark and fierce a voice as she had ever heard him use. “You will not question her honor again.” 

Then there was a heavy silence, and a great deal of glaring and taking of one another’s measure, and Bella had the wild urge to kick someone, anyone, _all of them,_ in the bits that apparently made them fit to speak for her. 

After what seemed like an age, Bard conceded – gave Thorin a tight little nod of acknowledgement, having judged his offense on Bella’s behalf as sufficient proof of Bella’s virtue, apparently, or something like that, she didn’t know and didn’t _care,_ she just wanted all of this nonsense to stop. It had not mattered one tiny little bit to the trolls or the giant spiders that she was a woman, and it was a sad and sorry day when she was left thinking she’d rather deal with giant spiders. 

Things did calm, somewhat, after that – the dwarves settled back down, sitting here and there where they could, and Bard ceased his frowning. They all seemed a little embarrassed, really, as well they should, Bella thought. 

Thorin sat beside her; any other time she might have rested her head on his shoulder, but now that seemed ill-advised. Positively scandalous. Bella seethed. 

It was a long, awkward span of minutes before he said, with soft sincerity, “I’m sorry. You’ve earned better.” 

It was on the tip of her tongue to say that she should not have _had_ to earn better, that _not being thought a whore_ was not something one should have to earn – but he truly did look sorry, and weary, and saddened on her behalf, in a way no one ever had before. 

So what she said was, “It’s not your fault,” and took his hand, and leaned in to his shoulder. 


	10. The last night in Laketown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER SPECIFIC WARNING: Bella discusses the deaths of her parents here, including passive suicide by starvation on her mother's part. 
> 
> ^*^*^*^

For all the Master of Laketown’s effusive welcomes, he did not offer them rooms in his own conspicuously expansive house. They were shown to an inn, where the innkeeper made a rather feeble attempt to refuse payment, and Thorin made a great show of paying far more than their rooms could possibly be worth, in gold, at which there was much cheering.

(It was all that was left of Gloin’s gold, but the townspeople didn’t know that.)

There were six rooms (and Bella had the suspicion that someone was turned out of at least two of them), one of which was hers, one Thorin’s in deference to his status, and the rest left to the company to divide amongst themselves. Thorin accepted the largest and best room with grace and thanks; it was neither the time nor the place for modesty on his part. Bella, however, insisted on being shown to the smallest. She understood why she had to have her own, for the sake of the inn’s reputation, but she still hated the idea of a bed all to herself while her companions, even poor wounded Kili, would have to double and triple up.

(No one questioned her attire and, to Fili’s great disappointment, absolutely no one thought she was male. It was apparently common knowledge that dwarvish women travelled in men’s attire – shocking, to the race of men’s sensibilities, cause for quite a bit of pointing and more than a few scandalized looks, but expected. As she was in the company of dwarves, this was simply accepted.)

Then there was feasting and drinking and song and dance, and while a hearty meal was oh so very welcome, it quickly became so loud and hot and crowded that Bella’s head began to swim. She might have enjoyed it more, and feared being trampled less, if she’d imbibed a bit more liberally. She’d never had much of a head for spirits, though, and had an unfortunate tendency to burst into maudlin tears when she lost it. Restraint, followed by an early retreat, seemed the wiser course.

The sounds of celebration were far more pleasant when they were drifting up to her through the floor boards, reminding her of being put to bed as a child and hearing the grown-ups still making merry down the hall. Her room had a bed that wasn’t all that much too large for her and a rickety-looking stool beside a far-too-tall wash-stand, and very little room to turn around between them. The walls had been painted a color that was trying to be white, but was more of a faded gray, and peeling. A single candle burnt in a sconce by the door, and there was a crudely beaten copper symbol of blessing hanging from a rusting nail over the foot of the bed.

She knew she should sleep, but instead found herself peering out through a knot-hole in the wall that someone had done a poor job of stuffing with sawdust and glue, watching the way the lights in all the windows rocked and swayed on the water. The whole town creaked, and smelled of fish and smoke.

She wasn’t sure how much time had passed when the knock came at her door. Thorin stood outside, looking faintly flushed but mostly sober.

“May I come in?” he asked. “With the door open, of course.”

“Oh,” Bella said, and stepped aside to allow him. “Is that what one does in an inn, to be respectable? I’ve -” She stopped, and laughed, and he ceased his examination of her room to give her a quizzical look. “I’ve never stayed in an inn before.” Nor been alone with a man in a room with a bed, though she’d slept beside him on the ground hundreds of times by now.

“It is,” he said, and looked both fond and chagrined.

“Well then,” Bella said, making a gesture of welcome, and propping the door widely ajar with a corner of the blanket from the bed – it reached, without having to pull it very far off the mattress.

“My thanks,” he said, and then nothing, and they stood together, there, awash in the cacophony of drunken, joyous voices from the common room. The candle guttered in the draft.

“Are you afraid?” Bella finally asked, barely more than a whisper.

Thorin exhaled, long and slow, and his shoulders loosened. He watched the candle flame. “No. Or yes, but not for myself. I fear for my nephews. My friends, my people, who have trusted me, followed me here. For you. But for myself . . . tomorrow, come what may, it will be an end. I do not fear it.” He turned his eyes to her. “And you, our burglar? Do you fear?”

“Yes,” Bella admitted. “But less – or, perhaps, _differently,_ than I suspect I should. I don’t know how to explain it; I’m terrified, but I could never do anything else but see this through, and somehow, in that, I’m not afraid at all. At the same time. That doesn’t make much sense, does it?”

“Perhaps it is strange to a gentle hobbit,” Thorin said, and there was pride in his voice. “But to one who has known battle? There is sense in it. There is tempered steel in you, Miss Baggins.”

“We shall see,” Bella said, with an embarrassed shrug.

He nodded, and cast his eyes about the room. “Your family, of whom you spoke on the barge – the Baggins side, they are your father’s kin?”

“Yes,” Bella said, uncertain why he would be asking that now – or at all, really. She’d spoken often enough of her home, but very little of her family, and before now she’d thought he’d noticed that – that he was being considerate, in not asking. That was not so, apparently, and she was a little disappointed.

“They did not think a daughter, an only daughter, should be permitted to inherit her father’s halls.”

“Oh, no, it wasn’t that,” Bella explained. “A daughter can inherit, if there’s no son – it would have been perfectly fine if I’d had a husband. It’s just that a woman – a young woman, not a widow, with no children – it’s not the done thing for a woman to live alone. And the Bagginses, well, the Bagginses are known for always doing the done thing.”

He smirked a bit. “And your mother’s family. The . . . Tooks, it was?”

“Yes,” Bella said.

“Who are thought mad.”

“I never should have said that,” Bella said, wincing.

“You should, and I never should have reacted as I did,” Thorin countered. “What did your mother’s kin think of your solitary life?”

“I don’t think they thought of it much at all,” Bella said. “They didn’t disapprove, if that’s what you mean, but we were never too close. They live a little ways off, most of them, and I don’t think they entirely approved of my mother marrying my father. Not much in common, the Bagginses and the Tooks – they thought he was after her money, from what I can gather, though that’s a lot of rot. They loved each other desperately; she couldn’t live without him. But everyone says I look like him, or like his mother. I’m more his daughter than hers, I think, to everyone’s mind.”

Thorin nodded, in a way that said he was putting something together in his mind. “You were young when you lost them.”

“No so young,” Bella said. “I’d passed my majority, Green Lady be thanked, or it all would have been much, much more complicated, and it was . . . it was quite awful enough."

She meant to say no more.

" _They_ were young," she blurted, after the space of a breath, the words spilling forth unbidden.  There'd been no need, in the Shire, to ever speak of something that everyone already knew - but Thorin didn't know.  "Young and healthy and then the long winter came and – there was an accident, my father fell on the ice and shattered most of the bones of his leg and – it never would have healed properly.  He spent months abed, but it did seem like it was mending, and then he just – died. In his sleep. And mother, she – well the gentler way to put it is that she died of a broken heart. She died of not eating, mostly. She thought if she’d gone for help – to the elves, she’d been to Rivendell, once, before she married – she thought she could have saved him. She never would have made it there in the snow, with the wolves, but she just -”

Bella stopped, and drew in a deep, steadying breath, and was surprised to find that she was not, in fact, weeping, nor in any danger of it.

“I am sorry,” Thorin said.

“Thank you,” Bella replied – once she had been very, very sick of everyone’s sympathy, but it had been a long time, now, and it was different, to hear it from him.

“I am sorry for how I spoke to you in Rivendell,” Thorin went on, “and in the mountains.”

“You have apologized for both of those things at least once before already,” Bella answered.

“I did not know you then as I do now,” he insisted, “and I did not truly understand the nature of my offense.”

“Well, you’re long since forgiven, regardless,” she said.

He nodded his acceptance, and when he looked up, she could see that he was weighing his words.

“May as well say it, whatever it is,” she suggested, with a small smile and a shrug. “It’s not a night to leave things unsaid.”

“No,” he agreed, and the smile he returned to her was soft and strange and a little sad. “No, it is not.” But still he paused, studying her, and she let him; it was not a night to get the words wrong, either. It should have made her bashful, she thought, to be watched so closely, but it didn’t.

“You were not happy there,” Thorin finally said. “You might have been, _should_ have been, in a better world – but you were not.”

Bella opened her mouth to disagree – then shut it again. Had she been happy, at Bag End?

“I tried very hard to be,” she said, the words forming themselves apace with her thoughts, and there was the lump in her throat and the hollowness in her chest that she’d expected earlier. No night to leave things unsaid, indeed. “I was very happy, once, when my parents were alive. That’s not what changed, though. I miss them terribly, still, but it’s not that. I think I changed.” She gave a little laugh. “I suppose I grew up, as everyone must do.”

“I imagine,” he said, “that there are grown, even aged hobbits, who are happy.”

“Yes,” Bella agreed. “Yes, there are.”

“And you were not one of them.”

“No,” she said, very quietly; it felt like a terrible confession. “There were times that I was,” she added, as if that might mitigate her guilt. She’d had a good, comfortable life – especially as compared to his! What right had she to be unhappy in it? “Lots of times, really. Curled up in my armchair with a book, or sitting on the hill above the door on a summer evening, watching the fireflies come out. In my garden with my caterpillars.” She laughed. “Do you know, of all silly things, I think I miss them the most? Caterpillars. But . . . but foolish as it must sound, they were my friends, each year, in their own brief little way. I miss them.”

“Not foolish,” Thorin said, shaking his head. “Once I might have thought so, but now . . . no, it is not foolish to treasure a thing that brings you joy, no matter its worldly worth, nor to value the friendship of even the smallest and least of creatures.”

“I do believe,” Bella said, giving him a sidelong look, “that you may have just been speaking of me.”

“Perhaps,” he allowed, with soft smile. “You _are_ quite small – but not the least of anything, though I might once have thought it, fool that I was.”

“Well,” Bella said, and was sure there ought to be more words after that, but could not find them.

“Will you return to your caterpillars, then, when our quest is done?”

Bella tilted her head at him. “Where else would I go?” She thought she might go stay in Rivendell, for a time, at least, but she had no intention of mentioning that to him.

“You could stay,” Thorin said. “If the dragon lives, follow us to the Iron Hills, where we will go to raise an army once we have the Arkenstone. And -” He drew in a deep breath, as if he feared to even speak the words. “And if the dragon is dead, stay.”

“Stay,” Bella repeated, as if she didn’t quite understand the word. She really wasn’t sure that she did.

“If you wished it,” Thorin said. “I will not ask it of you if your heart remains in the Shire; I know what it is to long for one’s home. If we part when our quest is done, know that you will go with my blessing and my friendship, always – but if you could come to see our home as yours, know too that you are welcome. More than welcome. I would.” He stopped. “I would be honored to have you at my side.”

“Oh,” Bella said, and was glad she managed that much. Stay? He _wanted_ her to stay?

“It’s a poor offer,” Thorin said, bluntly earnest. “I cannot claim otherwise – but you are right, it is no night to leave things unsaid. I can offer you no measure of wealth that is not already yours by right, should we succeed. Should we fail, it will likely mean our deaths.”

“Almost forgotten that, thanks,” Bella said with a snort and a little laugh, and he acknowledged that with a wry twist of his lips; nothing that could really be called a smile. Nothing she would have noted at all, at the start of all this, as meant to distinguish a friendly expression from a sour one. It was, though – friendly, in the deepest meaning of the word, warm and companionable and knowing.

He wanted her to _stay_. She felt as though she could float away – and at the same time, was unsure if she could bear it. To be so near to him, so clearly valued – and yet. What a greedy creature she was, Bella thought, and felt in danger of bursting into tears at how conflicted she felt.

“I mean to return Erebor to its former splendor,” Thorin was saying, “but that will be a task of many years, if not many lifetimes. I can offer you nothing without asking yet more – that you take up that task beside me. It is a thing I have no right to ask, when you have a home already, one that is not a ruin stinking of dragon.”

She swallowed. “I do miss the Shire. Not just my caterpillars. I miss the walk up to my door and the sounds Bag End made as it settled at night and – all sorts of things.”

Thorin nodded and looked away.

“The thing is, though,” Bella went on, “I’m almost certain that if I go back there, alone, I’ll miss you more.” And as to whether she meant Thorin himself, or all of them, with that ‘you’ – well, he could interpret that as he liked, but now she’d said it. Neither would be false, anyhow.

His turned sharply back to her, the set of his shoulders rigid, his mouth tense, and his eyes – she couldn’t quite hold his eyes.

“So what am I to do with that?” Bella asked. “I don’t want to choose.”

“You will have to,” he said, very seriously – even for him, there was a note of especial direness in his words.

“I had realized that.” She attempted lopsided half of a smile, meant to mock them both, to lighten what had become a very weighty conversation – but he did not return it. The intensity of his gaze was overwhelming, and Bella found something fascinating to study in the wall to her left. “It’s a bit far for regular visits. Even for a holiday here and there.”

“It is.” There was a long moment of quiet, and a sidelong look revealed that now he was the one studying walls.

She really could not imagine never seeing him again; bad enough to be without the rest of them, brothers to her now in all but blood (unless one counted blood spilled, and she thought perhaps she ought to). But Thorin . . . her world spun around him.

Of course it did, she scolded herself; he was a king, and this whole endeavor had been about returning his kingdom to him. It was inevitable that he should become important to her.

That was not it at all, but perhaps if she told herself it was often enough, it would become more bearable, with time.

“I should not try to sway you,” Thorin said, the words sounding as though they were dragged over stone.

“I wouldn’t mind,” Bella answered quietly, which was a great deal more honest than she had really meant to be, but, well, the words were out now.

He exhaled long and loudly. “For some, the promise of a noble name and station would be enough – but it is not enough for you, is it? You value peace and home more even than a crown. We _need_ one such as you, but I will not have you out of obligation. I am in your debt already.”

Bella turned those words over in her head, blinked at him, and finally said, “Name? Station?”

He stared at her.

“I don’t need any fancy titles, and I certainly don’t need to be made a – a lord of some kind. Lady, I suppose it would be,” she said, and grimaced – why did ‘lady’ sound lesser than ‘lord’? Not that either mattered to her. “I’ll be happy enough to have – hopefully, very hopefully, to have returned your own home, and peace, to you.”

And he just kept staring.

“It would be good to be needed,” Bella allowed. “That’s a point in favor of staying. I _am_ rather good at stocking a pantry, at being sure that what is needed is at hand in general, and while the idea of expanding that concept to the feeding and keeping of a whole kingdom is a _little_ daunting, well. I do believe I could learn.”

“Bella, what -” Thorin began to ask, stopped himself, and gave her a very odd look. “What exactly do you think it is that I’m asking you?”

“To stay in Erebor,” Bella answered. “And you have been quite generous in not actually asking at all, only offering. I am gratified to know that – that I’d be welcome, that you’d trust me to be part of its rebuilding. Even that you’d want to appoint me some title, though that’s really not necessary.”

“Not necessary?” He shook his head, and if Bella could credit what her eyes were telling her, she’d say that Thorin Oakenshield was laughing at himself. At least, there was an endearing look of bewildered, rueful mirth on his face. “No, not necessary for you to stay – but it would give me great happiness to bestow a certain title upon you, if you’ll have it.”

Much more likely he was laughing at her, really. It was a companionable sort of mocking, at least, if it was so. There was no condescension or scorn in his face.

It was nice to see him laugh at all. She’d like to see more of that; to cause more of that, and of the soft look in his eyes, whether it came with laughter or not.

Contentment; she’d like to see what he looked like contented.

Oh, but she was _such_ a hopeless fool.

“I’ve made a mess of this,” Thorin said, blowing out a breath – but he looked far from distressed about it. He looked, in fact, as far from distressed as she’d ever seen him. Off-kilter and a bit gobsmacked, perhaps, but breathtakingly unguarded.

There was something in that look on his face -

It was as if the last piece of a puzzle suddenly fell into place, and Bella began to suspect – perhaps quite belatedly, she thought – that she’d overlooked something.

A rather large something.

A something she was not going to look at now, not at all, not even the quickest of metaphorical glances, not a glimmer out of the corner of her mind’s eye. Not at _all._ She didn’t even want to breathe, afraid the very possibility would burst like a soap bubble.

“What – what title would you want to give me?” Bella asked, and if her voice was a bit breathless and wobbly, well, she refused to hold herself to blame for that.

“Belladonna, daughter of . . “ and he stopped, and laughed outright. Simple and full-throated. “I do not know your mother’s name.”

“Belladonna, daughter of Belladonna,” said Bella, and wondered if she tried very, very hard, if she could perhaps be a more ridiculous person.

“Belladonna, daughter of Belladonna,” Thorin said, utterly serious once more, except that having seen him laugh had somehow changed the very shape of his face in her sight. “Orc-slayer, weilder of Sting, Spidersbane. Belladonna Light-foot. Belladonna the Clever-tongued. Belladonna the Dauntless.”

“That is not _a_ title,” Bella said, her face aflame, the words choking her in a way that was somehow deliriously wonderful. “That is _six._ ”

“And all yours, whether you stay or go,” Thorin said. “All well earned.”

She really could not breathe at all.

“Two more, if you’ll have them: Belladonna, wife of Thorin. Queen under the Mountain.”

The room was swimming a bit. She cast around frantically for the little stool by the wash-stand, tottered the two steps it took to reach it, and sat with a thump.

Thorin was looking just – just _absurdly_ uncertain, how could he possibly look like that? That look did not belong on his face.

“You can refuse me and yet stay,” he said. “You remain welcome as a friend, if nothing more.”

“Queen,” Bella said.

“Yes.”

“I’m a hobbit.”

“I’d noticed.”

“But – you – me? But you – _you._ ” A shining example of her potential for statecraft, Bella thought, and wondered if she might be sick.

“Bella,” he said, very gently, “should I not even have asked?”

“No!” she exclaimed, bolting up off the stool and knocking it over. “No, it’s only – I didn’t think – I never - I’m going to sit down again.” And she righted the stool, and did.

He came and crouched down in front of her, took both of her very cold, slightly shakey hands, kissed the knuckles of each, and then settled them back on her knees cupped between his. “You need time to consider,” he suggested.

“Do you think you might – if you wanted, that is – could you kiss me?” Bella asked. “I think maybe if -”

She did not have the opportunity to complete that thought, not aloud, anyway – and then not at all.

Bella had some little experience of kisses – some very dusty and distant experience, from the first part of a youth that veered sideways into presumed spinsterhood before any suitor had the chance to get really serious. And then all the hobbits of her own age, as well as most of those of a respectable distance to either side of her age, were married – save for those she found completely unappealling. A few of those had maintained undying hope, but she certainly hadn’t kissed any of them.

But, there had, in the past, been kisses. Somewhat more than kisses, even.

She had, in all honesty, never really liked kissing much. The more-than-kissing was quite pleasant, yes, but the kisses themselves were mostly an awkward annoyance to be tolerated in order to progress to more enjoyable things, were she so inclined. Where she was not so inclined, they were just annoying and no more.

Perhaps, she now considered, that had less to do with the utter lack of appeal in someone else’s spit, and more to do with a sort of direness of affection inherent in a kiss on the lips. Kissing seemed silly, even playful kisses – ardent and impulsive in a way that she had never truly felt.

Kissing Thorin did not seem silly at all, and was accompanied but no lack of feeling.

It was more of a longing kiss than a passionate one, with one of his hands on her face and the other braced on the wall behind her so that he leaned over her. Her head was tilted back in a way that made her whole body arch up into the gentle, undemanding press of his lips, warm and slow and thorough. A statement of intent, this kiss, and yet it made her feel every inch of her skin and the pounding of her heart and the great potential of his nearness in a way that no previous kiss ever had.

Fervent, she thought; fervent was a good word. She was rather proud of herself for being able to think of it. She felt like her head was full with the swirls of colored smoke that came after Gandalf’s fireworks.

“Oh,” she said, as he drew away – still leaning over her, the hand on her cheek brushing a lingering thumb over her lower lip before leaving her. For a moment he loomed, thoroughly regal and demanding – then he seemed to realize what he was doing, and backed half a pace away.

“Oh?”

“You _want_ me,” Bella realized aloud, then closed her eyes in utter mortification.

“An offer of marriage hadn’t made that clear?” Thorin asked, and his incredulity was quite clear in his tone even if she wasn’t – was adamantly refusing to look him in the face, just now.

“Not really, no,” Bella said. “That is, you’d made it quite clear that you – you _admired_ me, but – well, I’m given to understand that kings are obligated to be practical in matters of marriage, and I thought – well, it was a very flattering list of qualifications, truly it was, but – it wasn’t, quite, well. I had some difficulty believing. That.”

“Is admiration such a poor reason for wanting?” he asked – and the incredulity was gone, replaced by a simple earnestness that made her open her eyes. “I can tell you that you are beautiful to me, because you are, but beauty is easy to find.”

“And – practicality?”

“Should I seek in marriage an alliance with those who abandoned us in our need?”

“But – your own people,” Bella objected. “Couldn’t you – _shouldn’t_ you -”

“Show favor to one family above others?”

“Oh,” Bella said, rather less cheerfully.

“Bella,” Thorin said. “I would choose you above all others. Do not fault me that it happens to be a wise choice as well as a pleasing one.”

“Not faulting.” Bella shook her head. “Just . . . working on believing.”

“You truly did not expect – all this time, did you not know?” Thorin asked, sounding quite disbelieving himself. “I had thought I could be no plainer.”

“I knew you felt _some_ affection for me,” Bella admitted quietly, blushing to speak of it, “But I’d thought it was in the manner of friendship. Anything else seemed . . . just too improbable.” And, softer still, “I didn’t want to hope – if I did and I were wrong, it would have been unbearable, and it seemed like such a foolish hope.”

“Some affection,” Thorin repeated, his face a picture of incredulity. “But you did hope?” And it occurred to her then that she’d said nothing of returning his affections. She’d asked for a kiss, and returned it in kind, but it had been more a measure of his feelings than a declaration of hers.

“I did,” Bella admitted, lifting her chin and holding his eyes despite how her cheeks flamed. “I tried not to, but I did – and then I decided it didn’t matter how it ended, because I – I had you for now, you were my friend and I could help you win your kingdom back, and that – that was quite a lot, really, for a simple hobbit to have with a king.”

“Bella,” he repeated, sounding near to agonized. He knelt again before her, bringing his eyes level with hers. “Belladonna Baggins – a simple hobbit. If that is what you are, then it is simple hobbits who should be kings and queens of all. It would be a better world.”

“Maybe it would be, but it’s not,” Bella said, though she didn’t want to – but she must, if she was to have any peace in her mind for the rest of her days. “And you are a king in the world that is. Thorin, are you _sure_ –“

“I love you,” he said, and she forgot what she’d meant to say, or why it mattered. She forgot words, for a moment.

“I love you as I had not known I could,” Thorin went on, speaking not with fervor but softly and plainly, as if making a statement of simple truth. “I did not think there was room in my heart for such a feeling, but there you are, and will always be. I am sure.”

“Oh,” Bella whispered. “Well. In that case.”

“Might I have an answer?” Thorin asked, and though his voice was light and unworried, his eyes were not.

“Yes,”Bella said. “It’s yes. I’m not at all sure it should be, I don’t know a thing about being a queen, but I love you so very much. I didn’t know how I was going to go back home and go on with my life without you. So my answer is yes, I will marry you.”


	11. The desolation of Smaug / into Erebor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge thank-you to the lovely and patient Saathi1013 for beta-reading and general hand-holding.
> 
> ^*^*^*^

“My lady!” Balin called, as they made their way up the barren shore toward the hills.  “Walk with me a moment, if you please.”

“Certainly,” Bella said, and paused to let him catch up.  Thorin, whom Bella had been walking just behind, turned and gave Balin a look that could only be described as nervous.  Balin’s answering expression was fond and knowing and more than a little smug.

Perhaps, Bella thought ruefully, she had not hidden the thin braid or the bead in her hair quite so well as she’d thought she had. It could be something else that was putting that look on Balin’s face, of course, but given the circumstances, she doubted it.

Balin said nothing as she fell into step beside him, but he set a slow pace, letting a distance form between them and the rest of the company - except, oddly enough, for Nori, who took up Bella's other side.  

"Am I right to think that congratulations are in order?" Balin asked, once they were safely out of earshot.

Nori snorted, at which Balin gave him a quelling look.

"Um," said Bella, and flushed.  "That's, well, it's not that we're keeping it a secret exactly -"

"It's just that you're not telling anyone, and hoping they won't notice," Nori said, quirking a brow at her.  "Which is totally different.  Peace, lass," he added, raising his hands, when he saw her expression.  "I'm only teasing."

"It is well-done of you," Balin said, throwing Nori another exasperated glare, “to save the announcement for another day.”   

“I probably ought to let you go on thinking that decision was made entirely so as to avoid stealing any of this day’s glory, but to be truthful, I also wanted a proper party, with a cake,” Bella grumbled.  “Possibly several.  Which could not have been managed today.  Will there even need to _be_ an announcement?”

“Don’t think anyone else has noticed anything in particular,” Nori answered, with a significant look to her hair, which was wrapped up in a bun with Thorin’s bead hidden inside, “which is not to say that I think they’re going to be all that surprised.”

“But they will all be glad for you,” Balin said, “as am I.  He could not have chosen better.”  

“Aye, you’ll do,” Nori agreed, and grinned widely.  “That wasn’t actually what we called you back here for, though.”

“To business, then,” Balin said, and Nori pulled several rolls of parchment seemingly from nowhere - they must have all been tucked into his coat, though Bella couldn’t see how.  

“Wish I’d thought of it sooner,” Balin was saying, “but better late than never.  My brother and I drew these out last night, as best we could from memory.”

Nori handed over a parchment, and Bella unrolled it to find a crudely drawn map.

“They’d be better if my little brother could hold his liquor,” Nori said, “Can draw you anything, Ori can, clear as if he had it right in front of him, from just a few words - but he was busy drinking himself under the table, and it seemed a shame to hold him back at a time like this.”

“Erebor is vast,” Balin told her, pointedly ignoring the slight to his artistic skills, or perhaps Dwalin’s.   “And we don’t know the precise location of this door.  With any luck, it will adjoin the great halls directly, and you’ll have a straight shot down to the treasury - but we can’t be certain.”

“And luck treats you kinder when you give it a hand,” Nori added.  

“Always best to be prepared.” Balin nodded.  “So there you are - you study those as we go, and I’ll be explaining what you see.”

“That’s a very good idea,” Bella observed, turning the map around and squinting at it.  She should have thought of this herself, preferably before it was the last minute and she was left trying to decipher Dwalin’s handwriting.

“That way,” Balin said dryly, when she’d turned it nearly in a circle.  “We do, on occasion, have a bit more sense than the Maker gave to shale - not that I’d expect you to know it, from the evidence you’ve had in this venture.”

“You haven’t done so poorly,” she objected.

“We’re not dead,” Nori offered, with a smirk and a considering tilt of his head.  “So there’s that.”

“The circumstances have been . . . trying,” Bella insisted, at which Nori gave another amused snort.  

“Did you help with the maps?” Bella asked.  She still wasn’t very good at estimating dwarven age, but she thought Nori couldn’t have been more than a child when Erebor fell.

“Only by way of thoughtful critique,” Balin answered for him, with a withering sidelong look in Nori’s direction.

“She still can’t tell which way’s up,” Nori retorted.  “Defeats the purpose of a map, that does.  They were worse before,” he said, aside, to her.  “Would have left all manner of important bits out, too.”  And he reached across her arm to tap a spot on the map.

That spot was labeled - in cramped, blotchy writing, clearly an afterthought - _‘Echoes.  Can hear footsteps in hall underneath.’_  

“That’s the sort of thing you need to know,” Nori told her.  “Sort of thing that keeps you alive in this business.”

“This business,” Bella repeated back.  

She could see them so clearly, in her mind’s eye, huddled together in some out-of-the-way corner of the inn’s boisterous common room, all a little drunk and a lot exhausted, bickering over a bit of parchment by fading candlelight.  Searching their memories for the smallest details, in case they might be of use - echoes and footsteps.

“Burglaring, of course,” Nori said.

They were depending on her, all of them.  

She’d known that, of course, since the day she stepped out her door, but she’d never felt it quite like she did then. The weight of that responsibility dropped over her shoulders like a heavy cloak. This quest was not, in the end, about outwitting trolls or goblins, fighting giant spiders or escaping elves.  That was all just the getting there.  The point of it all was to get into the mountain, into the dragon’s lair, and reclaim a certain stone.

And that - that was _her_ job.

“Seem to recall you’d never stolen a thing in your life, before you met us,” Nori said, and when she looked up, he was studying her in a close, expectant sort of way, as if he knew just exactly what she’d been thinking.  

Bella gave herself a good shake, and said, as glib and half-offended as she could manage, “I have gained some experience, thank you!”

Nori gave her the smallest of approving nods.   _Chin up and one foot in front of the other,_ said that nod, _that’s the way._  “Some,” he allowed, “which is better than none, but not as good as more.  It’s a long walk, lass, might as well use the time.  Lesson the first - always be thinking ahead.”  

^*^*^*^

Gandalf was not where he said he’d be, which was beginning to be more expected than not.  Thorin refused to wait for him, which was similarly predictable.

“Lass,” Balin said, quietly, while Nori was up ahead talking to Ori - which Dori was allowing without a single scowl, for once.  

Balin had been calling her ‘my lady’ for nearly two months now, and before that it had been ‘Miss Baggins’ - such a familiar form of address was new, and while that was welcome in and of itself, there was a note of reticence in his voice that made her uneasy.

“I’m going to ask you something,” he said, “and I want you to know you needn’t answer, if you wouldn’t feel right about it.”

“Alright,” Bella said, frowning.

“Thorin,” Balin said, and paused, choosing his words carefully.  “I’d say you know him better, now, than any but my brother or I, and Dwalin is . . . loyal.  Perhaps to a fault.  The lads -” He grimaced.  “I can’t say he was wrong, to leave Kíli behind - that boy needs a healer, not a hard day’s march, if he’s to keep that leg.  Still, it’s -”  Balin shook his head, brows drawn together in worry.  

“It’s what?” Bella prompted.

“Is he still . . . is he with us, lass?” Balin asked, and sounded afraid of the answer.  “Is Thorin still himself?”

Bella wanted to say yes, of course he was, but such a question deserved more thought than that.  “He’s troubled,” she said, “but not more or less than when we first met, I think.  I can’t, shouldn’t, say more than that.”

“Of course not,” Balin agreed, and sighed.

“I trust him.  Absolutely,” Bella said.  “But I might not be all that objective either.”

“No,” Balin said, “No, I suppose not.”  He was quiet a moment, then said, “I do not think I could love that lad any more if he were my own son, and I fear for him.  And you,” he added.  “You might not be family just quite yet, but that doesn’t make me like the idea of sending you in to face a dragon.  Truth be told . . . I cannot put into words what it would mean to see Erebor again, and even so, I’m not sure it’s worth what it might cost.”

Bella had no idea what to think of any of that, though it was making her stomach twist into knots.  

“Well,” she finally said, when the quiet had drawn on far too long, “if you don’t want to pay for something, it’s smart thinking to hire a burglar.”

For a second he just blinked at her, and Bella had the awful, panicked feeling that that had been completely the wrong thing to say, _of course it was_ , what was she _thinking_ making jokes - but then he laughed, a startled bark of a sound that had several of the company ahead turning and giving them odd looks.  

“Maker bless you, lass,” Balin said, and put a hand on her shoulder, “you might just get us through this yet.”

^*^*^*^

They found the door, and gave up on the door, and then Bella figured out the door - and why did this quest involve so many riddles, really?  It seemed a touch improbable, if not outright ridiculous.  She had the distinct feeling that some higher power was laughing at their expense.  

Bella knew she would, to the day she died, remember the look Thorin gave her when he picked the key back up.  She doubted any tangible gift could ever match it.  

And then the were in the mountain.  

She’d thought it might not seem real, but the opposite proved to be true - the reality of the situation, and the weight of her responsibility, was suffocating.  

Bella stared up at the carving over the door, heard the great reverence in Balin’s tone as he spoke of the Arkenstone, and found herself saying, “Thorin?  Might I have a word, before I proceed?  Alone?”

If the indulgent way the others shooed the two of them forward around a corner and then shuffled away down the hall was any indication, Nori was right that she and Thorin had been . . . somewhat less subtle than she realized.  The announcement of their betrothal was likely to be a bit superfluous, it seemed, no matter how many cakes there were – but then, that was usually the way of such things.

Oh how she wished that she was, in truth, pulling him aside to steal a kiss for courage.

“You know they thought it was impossible,” Bella said, as soon as she was certain the rest of the company would not hear.  “Your kin, the ones who will only follow you if you can show them this stone – you know they sent you on what they thought was a fool’s errand, that it was just an excuse to ignored their oaths.  If they wouldn’t fight for you just because – because it was right, hang it all, how can you trust that having the stone will matter to them?”

“Because they will have no more excuses,” Thorin said on a sigh, and to her great relief, did not sound offended or at all surprised.  “To deny Erebor their loyalty when I hold the king’s jewel would be to forsake all honor, for the world to see.  Dáin is proud; he would not do this.”

“Dáin is going to get a swift kick to the shins, the first I see him,” Bella countered.

Thorin smiled, though only a little.  “That I would like to see.”  Then, smile gone, “We have known many betrayals and much loss.  We are a people all but forgotten.  Dáin is not alone in his doubts; there are many who say that Erebor is no more than a memory, and that to try to reclaim it is folly.  But if I can show them that we have done what none believed we could, if I hold in my hand the king’s jewel as proof that the line of Durin endures – they cannot deny us then.”

“I hope you’re right,” Bella answered.  “And don’t think that I’m trying to avoid going in there –“

“Never would I think that,” Thorin assured her.

“ – but perhaps we should have some other plan as well?” Bella said.  “Finding one gem in a vast hoard, it’s – well, I will try, you know I will try, but wouldn’t it be sensible to retrieve some other things was well?  I doubt the dragon would notice if I found my way to the library, for example.  There must be books – relics, art, histories – things that could be salvaged.  That seems like more of a sure thing, and . . . it’s not what you hope, I know that and I’m sorry to have to say it, but I’d rather have it said now.  If things don’t turn out as we’re all hoping  . . . you could have _something._ ”

“The Arkenstone is what we need,” Thorin replied, in a tone that would allow no disagreement.  “The rest means nothing without it.”

“Not to Dáin, perhaps, but it might to your people back in the Blue Mountains,” Bella insisted quietly.  “I think, in time, it might even to you.  I’m not giving up hope now, Thorin, truly I’m not, I’m just trying to plan for any eventuality – so that no matter what happens, we’ve something to show for it.”

“I have stood once more within the stone of my homeland,” Thorin answered, eyes turned toward the mountain’s heart and gone distant – as though he could peer through both rock and time.  “That is something.”

“Yes,” Bella said, subdued.  “Yes, of course it is.”

“Perhaps the dragon truly is dead,” Thorin said, “and we will need no army.”

“Do you believe that?” Bella asked.

“No,” he admitted, and visibly pulled himself away from whatever it was in the depths that called to him.  “But he slumbers, and if we are fortunate, he will never know we have been here – the longer we remain, the farther we venture in, the more we risk waking him.  If our luck holds, he may yet slumber when we return, many hundreds strong.  He will be caught unawares, surrounded and trapped and unable to take to the air, and we will be ready with many weapons devised for the sole purpose of piercing a dragon’s hide.  This time, he will not face swords half the length of his claws and axes that broke on his hide.   _This_ time, he will not trample brave dwarves who stood though they had no true chance.  Let him see how he fares, the cowardly worm, when he must evade more than a single windlance and a handful of black arrows, entrusted to the watch of Men, and even that -”

He stopped, and swallowed; his voice had gone bitter with memory.

“Even that was only a sop thrown out to allay my fear, though my grandfather thought it senseless – no, worse than that.  Blasphemous.  He was so utterly sure that Erebor was meant to endure to the end of all days – that all our prosperity was no more than our due, as ordained by the Maker, and no foe could possibly defeat us.  He would not hear otherwise, even from his own grandson.   I tried,” Thorin said, beseeching, seeking absolution for a sin that was never his.  “Bella, I tried.  He would not listen, and I did not know what else to do.”

 _What of your father_ , Bella wanted to ask, _did he try?_  Why should that burden have fallen to Thorin, who would have been barely of age?  “There was no more that you could have done,” she told him.

“Not then,” Thorin agreed, “But now -”  He drew in a shaky breath.  “Now these are _my_ people, my kingdom.  Mine to avenge, where I could not protect.  Mine to repay, for all that was lost.  I would care nothing for the Arkenstone for my own sake, but this is the task that was set for me.  I will see it done, and Dáin will have to honor his oath.  I will bring my people home.”

“But – Thorin, if he doesn’t?” Bella pressed, though she hated it.  She thought – miserable about it – that this was, in a way, her first act as queen.    

“He _must_.  I cannot allow myself to doubt that; there is no other way.”

Bella said nothing, to that, but the look Thorin gave her made it clear enough that he had heard what she did not say.  He turned toward her and took her hands in his.

“So many times, this quest has hung on the edge of defeat,” he said.  “I do not know what the Maker may intend for me or for my people – if he judges our deeds and decides our fates, or if he merely looks on, uncaring.  But I know that you, my Belladonna the dauntless, have saved us again and again.  You stood against my enemy when I had fallen; you called us back when we had given up hope.  Whether you are simply clever, or lucky, or blessed, I cannot say – but we would not be here without you.  So I ask you, now, for just once more.  One more trick, one more moment of impossible luck.  I have not the faith to beg the Maker without knowing myself a liar and a fool, so I must ask you instead.  Give me the chance to make this right.”

“Well,” Bella said, and had to clear her throat.  She wasn’t sure she had any more faith than he did, but she prayed regardless; please, Green Lady, do not make me see him broken.  “Well, I’ll just go find this Arkenstone of yours, then, shall I?”

^*^*^*^

Later, crouched in the dubious shelter of a pile of coins, Bella thought that perhaps she ought to have been a bit less high-minded with her prayers.

Something like, ‘please, let the dragon be a heavy sleeper,’ might have been more to the point.

^*^*^*^

“You’re alive!”

Bella could have screamed at the sound of Thorin’s voice.  What was he _doing_ here?  He should have been waiting safely – comparatively safely, anyway - outside!  But there he was with his sword in hand, as if that could possibly do him or her or _anyone_ any good against a _dragon_.

“Not for much longer!”  And she would have kept running past him, assuming he would follow, had he not stood between her and the door.

“Did you find the Arkenstone?” he demanded.

Dáin and his army could bloody well choke on the Arkenstone, Bella thought, on the edge of hysteria.  She might well shove it down his throat herself – assuming they lived to see the outside of this mountain, much less the Iron Hills.

“The dragon’s coming, we have to get out!” she answered, as should have been obvious.

“The Arkenstone!”  His voice was agonized, barely his own, and he did not budge as she came barrelling toward him.  In fact, he moved such that he was clearly, deliberately blocking her path.  “Did you find it?”  

“Yes, _yes_ , I found it, not that it will matter if the dragon roasts us and takes it right back!  We need to go!”

But Thorin did not move.

Bella stumbled to a halt, thoughts still racing; what was he _doing?_  Had she not made the danger clear?  (She was fairly certain that she had.)

He stood there as if stunned, a small frown of confusion on his face, and stared, transfixed, at the bulge in her coat where she’d shoved the thrice-damned Arkenstone.  Then he took one slow step toward her, which was very much the opposite of the direction they should both be going.  He moved as if in a dream.

Something was wrong with him, something was very, _very_ wrong, and they had absolutely no time for it.    

“I have the Arkenstone, but the dragon, I woke the dragon, and I’m sorry, I am so, so sorry for that, but that’s what’s happened, so  - Thorin, are you listening?  Do you understand me?  There is a very angry dragon chasing me, and it is going to find us momentarily!”

“Let me see it,” he said.  “I -”  His breath was a shudder.  “I must see it.”  He did not, obviously, mean the dragon.

“ _Now?_  I promise you, I’ve got the right stone, it’s hard to miss!”  Could she _drag_ him out of the mountain?

 “It is the right stone,” Thorin agreed, hushed, head tilted and brow furrowed in a dazed sort of confusion.  “Of that I have no doubt.  It calls to me.”

An awful sick feeling began to rise in her chest alongside her already overwhelming terror.

The dragon said – no, _no_ , it _lied_ , it had to have lied.  They _needed_ the Arkenstone, or those faithless wretches he called kin would give them no aid.

“So strange,” Thorin murmured, “that I never heard it before.  But it is the king’s jewel, and I was not yet king.”

“Thorin,” Bella insisted, half strangled with dread, “the _dragon_.  We must –“

“It _speaks_ to me, thought there are not words,” Thorin said, entranced, and showed no sign that he had heard her at all.  “I _must_ see it.  Give it to me.”  His voice went hard and imperious on the demand.

There was little point in trying to deny it, though she wanted to, wanted to cry and wail and stomp her feet in denial of it - the dragon had not lied.

“If – if you don’t mind,” Bella said.  “I think it’d be best if I just held on to it for now.”

His eyes focused on her face, narrowed and without any hint of warmth.  “It is mine, why do you deny it to me?”

If she ran past him, would he follow?  Would he try to stop her?

“Oh, I don’t know, because you’re muttering about it whispering to you and acting like you’ve taken a knock on the head?” Bella retorted, more than a little hysterically.  “Listen to yourself!”

She felt the betrayal on his face like a blow.  “So you, too, think me mad.”

“What?  No!” Bella exclaimed, “No, that is not what I meant at all!  You’re acting very . . . off, at the moment, yes, but I really don’t think you’re to blame.”

“Kind words, but your deeds speak louder.  You keep the king’s jewel from me – you fear I will be overcome, as was my grandfather.  You do not trust me.”

“It’s the jewel that I don’t trust!” Bella insisted.  “This _isn’t_ you!”

“Is it not?” he demanded.  “Is my frustration so senseless, so without cause?  What more must I do to prove myself?”

“Nothing,” Bella said, shaking her head.  “Thorin, nothing, you’ve more than proven -”     

“The mountain is mine,” Thorin ranted, voice growing ever harsher and louder.  “The _heart_ of the mountain, is mine, as if it were my own heart!  You are not a dwarf, you cannot understand!”

“I know your heart,” Bella said, choking on the words.  “And I think I understand that stone better than you do, right now.   _Think_ , Thorin, bare hours ago the Arkenstone was no more to you than a means to an end, and now you say it’s like your own heart?  Does that seem right to you?”

“Am I not Durin’s heir?  Am I not king, once more, under the mountain?”

“Of course you are, Thorin, but –“

“Then give me what is mine!” he roared.

The dragon must have lost her scent, or they would have been naught but cinders already – but after that, well, it knew where they were now.

She could not give him the stone, just couldn’t – because that was backwards, really, to the truth of the matter.  She could not let _it_ have _him_.

But would it be better that he die?

She knew how Thorin would answer that, were he in his right mind.

Bella swallowed, and straightened her spine.  “No.”  She took a step back, and another, as he followed.  She shook her head.  “No, not when just being near it has – has done _this_ to you!”

“You do this to me, all of you!” he raged.  “You would have me for your king, you look to me to put all of this right, and yet you accuse me of madness when I seek that which would make me king in truth!  That which is my _right!”_

 She would have to run past him, Bella decided, or try, and just pray that he was still himself enough that he wouldn’t try to hold her by force.  (Or – though she didn’t want to think it – that bewitched as he was, he’d be too clumsy to catch her.) He would chase after her, and then they’d both be out of the mountain and as safe as they were likely to get.

“You feared this yourself,” Bella said, with far, far more calm than she felt, “or something very like it.  And if you were yourself, you would thank me.”

She filled her lungs, clenched her fists, braced herself to dart forward – _now_ , she had to run _right now_ if she wanted either of them to survive, she had to!

She would not be abandoning him.  He would follow.  He _would._

 _“Thank you?”_ Thorin scoffed.  “For this insult, this betrayal?  From the others, I could bear such distrust, but _you_ – you, who I would have made queen –“

But then his voice dropped away,  his eyes focused on something over her shoulder, and Bella knew she had hesitated too long.

She watched his fury evaporate and horror overcome him – watched him raise his sword, and step in front of her, and she wished she could know if he meant to defend her, or the stone.

Not that it mattered, as he had no hope either way.  She could have slipped on her ring and maybe, if she had any luck left, she might have gotten away – but she didn’t.  Her hand closed on the hilt of her own sword.  Thorin had no ring to let him vanish, and the dragon had seen him – it was much to late for _him_ to run, even if he would.  And hopeless or no, she could not let him face the dragon alone.

Then they were not alone; the rest of the company came rushing to their sides with battle cries on their lips.  Bella wanted to shriek in utter, despairing frustration at the lot of them – two or ten, it didn’t matter, what did they think they could _do_ other than die as well?

(And yet, if this was the end, she couldn’t be entirely sorry that they were there with her.)

But while the others were screaming defiance, Thorin - appearing far less dazed than he had been moments ago - was looking over the ledge behind them.  She saw in his face that he had reached some decision - and then he shoved her off the side of the walkway, toward a door below.  The dragon roared; Bella landed skidding and rolling in a pile of dwarves doing likewise.  A wave of heat came pouring toward them ahead of the flames, hot enough to make her head swim and her eyes sting, and they all scrambled for the door.

Thorin pushed all of them through to safety before he followed, trailing dragonfire.

 


	12. The death of Smaug

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER SPECIFIC WARNING: There's panic and fleeing and people being desperate and stampeding as Smaug approaches Laketown. YMMV on how gritty I actually managed to make it, but if you've been in such a situation I could see it being upsetting.
> 
> ^*^*^*^

Bella was the first one out of the mountain.  She saw the dragon take to the air spinning, shaking off the gold as if it was dust, and then - for one breath-stealing moment, it fell.  

 Its wings snapped open a heartbeat later.

 They’d failed.

  _She’d_ failed.  The dread she felt was beyond anything she could have imagined, a weight of guilt and horror like the mountain itself fell upon her.  All those people; Bard, who had helped them.  Bard’s _children.  Fíli and Kíli and Bofur and Óin_.  She’d killed them.  One misstep, two poorly chosen words, and with that she’d killed them all.  

 She heard the others catching up, calling out questions to her - _What did it mean?_ \- but she couldn’t turn and answer them.   Thorin ran past her, scrambling up the jagged mound of rubble to stand on the highest piece of broken stone, shoulders squared, hands in fists.  Dwalin stopped a little ways behind him, near to where Bella crouched.

 “It got some of that gold down its throat,” he muttered.  “I’m sure it did.”

 “What does that matter?” Bella asked.  “Gold isn’t poison.”

 “Not poison, but -”  

 And the dragon faltered, a spasm running the length of its ridged spine.  Its distant roar sounded strangled.  It spewed forth a gush of flame, but that died out quickly, and then great billows of thick, black smoke pour from its maw.

 Thorin gave a sharp, wordless shout of triumph, and behind her, the others cheered.

 Did they not realize, not comprehend where the dragon was going?  Yes, it seemed that it had not escaped them entirely unscathed; Bella didn’t quite understand _how_ it was wounded, exactly, but it clearly was - but how could they rejoice in such a petty victory, if they knew what it would soon cost?

 “The gold’s in its lungs,” Dwalin said, in the grim tones of one trying to convince himself.  “It’s as good as dead.”

 “As good as?” Bella snapped, and laughed, though it was the furthest thing from funny.  “No, I really don’t think it’s _as good as_ \- a dead dragon couldn’t burn Laketown, and that would be far -”  The words caught in her throat.  She felt like she was suffocating.  “Far better.”

 “He won’t reach it,” Thorin answered.  He spoke as if he were utterly sure, but none of the tension had left him.  He stood as still as carven stone, and taut as a bowstring wound too tight.  He looked like he could shatter.  Every word he had ever spoken of faith was in Bella’s mind - how he had none for higher powers and prophecies and fate.  

 He’d had faith in _her_ , they had all trusted her, and look what she had done - woken a dragon for the sake of a stone that drove Thorin to madness.  A stone that made no difference now.

 How many people lived in Laketown?  As many as in the Shire?  More?  Not that it mattered; if there had been no one there but the four companions they’d left behind, she still could never have forgiven herself.

 The dragon again wavered, dipping from side to side like a drunk and coughing smoke mixed with fire, and Bella tried to tell herself that hope remained.  Thorin might be right.  He just _had_ to be right.  

 There was more smoke than flame, but it would take only a little to turn a wooden town to ashes, and the dragon was over the lake now.  

 It might be dying, but it wasn’t doing it fast enough.  

 ^*^*^*^

 Tauriel had not failed to notice that she’d found four dwarves, rather than thirteen, and she had understood what it must mean - that the rest had gone on head, to the mountain.  She had not forgotten that a dragon slumbered there.  She knew these things, but they had been relegated to some far corner of her mind while there was a host of orcs right before her, and battle singing in her blood.  

 She had not slain every orc, as she might have wished - but she had defended those who would have been helpless against them.  The dwarves had fought as best they could, and bravely - even the children had fought - but they had no weapons, no armor.  Had she not followed them (and Legolas followed her), the orcs would have slaughtered them all.   That and worse, and _she_ had stopped that horror from coming to pass.  

 She was righteous, triumphant, vindicated; by the Valar, why had she waited so long? Why had she allowed herself to become deafened and numbed to what she knew, in her very blood and bone, to be her true duty?  This was what she was meant to be - a defender of innocents, a light and a sharp-edged blade against the dark.  This was _right_.  

 And then, Kíli.

 Kíli, worse than dying, screaming in pain, the poison corrupting him before her eyes.  Kíli, healed, by her hand.  Kíli, still delirious with fever, asking if she could love him.  

 She already did, though she had not allowed herself to think it until now, as the house swayed and shivered and the air coming in through the shattered walls tasted foul with of fear.  Outside was full of anxious shouts and frightened cries, names called out in desperate urgency.  The bawling of bewildered children.  Glass breaking, the clash of metal, the barking of dogs and the angry squealing of pigs.  Snapping, splintering wood, curses, the knocking and banging of too many boats crammed together and too many bodies scrambling into them.  Hundreds of feet ran, their footfalls ringing like a cacophony of bells on the floating boards that made up the streets.  Splashes and screams and weeping.  The town creaked and groaned as if it might break apart.  

 Inside, dust rained down on Tauriel’s head from the ruined roof, and the youngest of the children wailed, “Where’s Da?  Why hasn’t he come back?”

 The elder two didn’t answer her, but the boy turned to the room’s other occupants, eyes wide and glassy with terror.  “Is any one of you an archer?” he demanded, frantic.  “A good one?”

 “I am,”  Tauriel answered.

 Six hundred wasted years, and a feeling blooming in her chest that severed her future at, if she was lucky, two hundred more - and she understood, and accepted, and inwardly rejoiced.  All of that had to be, because she was meant, had always been meant, to be _here_.

 It was no simple thing to follow the boy - Bain, he called himself, and it seemed to her an odd and ill-favored name - through the maddened crowd.  The dragon was near enough that the wind carried the stench of its smoke, acrid and wrong like the burning of something rancid.  

 “It was - I put it in a boat,” the boy said, when they reached the place where he had left the iron arrow.  “I put it -”  And his shoulders slumped, his face crumpled, and his eyes filled with tears.  “It’s gone.  I lost it.  Da gave it to me and I lost it, we’re all going to die because -”

 Tauriel grabbed his shoulders.  “You are to blame for none of this, and it is not gone.  Look at your feet; look at the boats.”  

 He did as she said; the boats, all jostling to navigate the narrow lanes between streets, were full of people and, here and there, animals.  She could see one or two treasured things - a painting wedged between three small children, an intricately carved clock clutched in the arms of a weeping, elderly woman - but no one had brought nets and weights, traps, barrels, tridents and spears.  These things littered the boards on which they stood and bobbed in the water - thrown from the boats to save the space, to make room for the weight of more precious things.  

 And even still, the streets were far from empty; people stood on the edges and screamed and begged their neighbors.   She saw a few boats trying to turn back, but they made no better progress than those trying to leave.  There was no room; the town had not been made to allow for such a massive flight of its people.  

 A man jumped into the canal with a small child on his shoulders, and tried to swim after the boats.  

 “Search!” Tauriel told Bain, jerking her head at the bundles cast everywhere in the street.  

 He nodded, swallowing back his tears.  

 She let him go and turned in the opposite direction.  She was trampled and kicked and cursed as she rifled through the townspeople’s leavings - and she could not even be angered, because they did not know why she was on her hands and knees with seeking fingers, tossing the discarded livelihoods of strangers about.  She must look like a vulture, hoping to prey on their misfortune.

 “Tauriel!”  

 She stood, and was nearly knocked over the side.  The crowd on the street had thinned, for the span of a few minutes, but now it was again increasing; the fleeing boats had jammed to a complete halt.  Some were walking through them as if the boats were a street themselves, though she did not know what they hoped to do when they reached the end.  Most, however, had decided this way was doomed, and swam back, the tide of bodies surging in her direction.  Behind them, abandoned boats tipped and overturned for lack of ballast and dumped those balanced on them into the water.   

 “Tauriel!  I have it!”  She could not see him, though she fought her way through the crowd toward the sound of his voice.  Then she saw the point of an arrow held up - more like a spear, but with its tip carved so it would not drag in the air.  Her stomach swooped at the sight of it; this would be their salvation, and she had never shot such a thing in her life.  

 But she had been lead here; she would not fail now.  

 “What is the quickest way?” she demanded of Bain, when she reached him.  Her hand closed around the cold shaft of the arrow.  Its weight was terrible, for she knew what such a thing could do, and the hide of the beast that bore down on them now had withstood this before.  

 “This way!” Bain shouted, grabbed her free hand, and pulled her along.  She could catch glimpses of the windlance tower between the houses, there and then gone, growing ever larger as they neared.  

 The dragon, too, loomed larger and larger, near and high enough that the houses no longer obscured it from view at all.  It trailed black smoke and flame through the pre-dawn sky.

 It dipped and lurched and weaved, listing far to one side before it righted itself, plummeting and then catching itself on unsteady wings.

 Her heart leapt and her stomach dropped; it was wounded.  The dwarves had fought.  Perhaps - and she was, for Kíli’s sake, fiercely hopeful - Thorin Oakenshield’s company yet lived.  

 But the smoke it spewed like a charnel fire was a cloud around it, and behind that, its skin was flecked with gold, glinting bright and dark.  

 Her eyes were sharp as any of her kin, but she would never see one loosened scale.  

 “Here!” Bain said, grabbing her shoulder when she would have continued on, eyes fixed on the beast.  They had reached the tower.  

 “Go back to your sisters,” Tauriel ordered him.  “Don’t try for the bridge, that will be the first thing he’ll burn, if I fail.  Watch the crowds, and go the other way - there are ruins all through the lake, if you swim well you could reach them, and when word of this reaches my people they will come, and you will be found.”  

  _Kíli_ \- but there was no more she could do for him than what she was already doing, and he was in his brother’s care.

 “Go,” Bain said, raising his chin and nodding at the tower.  “I’ve got to go find my Da.”  

 Tauriel wanted to tell him no - his father would not want that, no father would want that!  But she saw the determination in his face, and instead gripped both of his shoulders, gave him a sharp nod, and spoke as she would to any soldier.   “Valar guard you.”  

 She ran, up and up.  The higher she climbed the more of the town she could see; there were fires breaking out already, though the dragon had not yet reached them.  Overturned lamps, she thought, and stoves left lit - panic could easily do the dragon’s work for it.  A town made of wood must have a system for dealing quickly with fire, but none attended it now.  

 And then she was at the apex of the tower.  The windlance itself looked like the bones and sinews of a gaping maw, a thing of crude and primal power.  

 The dragon was close enough that she saw how it shuddered, and felt, at once, a vicious satisfaction and the edge of despair.  It was a large enough target, if she only needed to hit any part of it, that its twitching, jagged flight would make no difference - but another archer had made that attempt, and failed.  

 The smoke was thickest around its head, so she could not even see its eyes.  

 But she could see its fire.  

 Where the flame poured forth, there its mouth must be.  

 Through its mouth, Tauriel thought, and set the arrow to the bow.  Her hands were sure and steady, despite her fear.  Through its mouth and into its brain, or its spine - even if the blow were not deadly, if it went through some fleshy part of its face or neck, it would be choking on its own blood.  It would do - it would have to do.  It was the best chance she had.

 What odds were there, how many things had to happen just as they did, for her to stand in this spot at this time?  She was meant to be here, to do this thing; she would not fail.

  _Valar grant me grace and guide me.  Ilúvatar make me the instrument of your will._

 The lance was a heavy, unwieldy thing - so very, very different from her familiar bow - and it creaked with age and lack of care.  

  _Valar, just let the strings not snap!_

 She drew it back, as slowly and carefully as she could.

  _Valar, please._  

 Below her the town seemed to scream as one voice in its fear, but within her mind all had gone silent.  

 Thoughts, images, flickered; her Greenwood, as it had been before the blight came.  Legolas’ laugh, and the stubborn set of his jaw.  Her comrades in arms, chasing one another through the trees and shooting at apples tossed from the branches.  The taste of apples, not sour with rot.  Starlight.  Kíli, his fingertips just brushing hers.

 That moment in Thranduil’s throne room, full of furious realization, when something in her had . . . just . . . snapped.

 It all fell away, and within her was a deep, still pool of utter clarity.

 Before her was dragonfire.  

 Between the two, the arrow; a sharp, straight line, unwavering, certain, fated, right.

 Tauriel loosed the arrow.

The dragon fell.


	13. An Adventure

The dragon fell just short of Laketown.  It reared back and went stiff and then plummeted, just like a bird taken on the wing.  The men of the lake had shot it down, or so Bella had to guess.  Someone had shot it, anyway; even across the lake and through the smoke she saw it knocked back by the blow.  It had not merely succumbed to its wounds.

The hiss of steam when it hit the water could be heard at the gates of the mountain, and the waves that rippled outward from the spot where it plunged beneath reached the shores of the lake.  Laketown rocked on the water.  

For a long moment, none of the company gathered at the foot of the mountain moved or breathed.  

Slowly the waves subsided, and the smoke and the steam began to dissipate, and somewhere nearby a bird gave a cautious trill.  

Then Balin made a sound, a loud bark of incoherent noise as though all the air had been knocked from his lungs.  It might have been a laugh or a sob or a shout, or all of those.  The pall of disbelief shattered.

There were whoops and roars and chaos.  

Bella was the nearest to Dwalin, which was presumably why he grabbed her.  He swung her in a circle, laughing wildly; out of the corner of her eye she could see that Glóin was on his knees, wide-eyed and muttering what she could only presume to be thankful prayers.  Bombur was going around hugging everyone, and didn’t seem to realize there were tears running down his face.  Ori kept saying, “We did it!  We really did it!” over and over amidst hysterical giggles. Bifur grabbed him, muttering something no one was likely to understand, and dragged him into an ecstatic jig around Dori, who had latched onto Nori and seemed intent on squeezing the life from him.  Nori just looked gobsmacked.  

And Balin, though smiling, was openly weeping.  

Dwalin gave Bella a last spin, knocked their foreheads together in a way that she suspected was going to hurt later (but nothing,  _ nothing  _ hurt now), and threw her at Bombur.  She was momentarily engulfed in his arms and overwhelmed by the heaving of his chest; his chin just fit to the crown of her head, and his tears ran down into her hair.  The she was passed on again, this time to Ori and Bifur, who pulled her, tripping, along for a few steps - then Nori snagged her away from them.  He held her at arms’ length, one hand on each shoulder, appraising - Bella suddenly wondered what _she_ looked like. 

Was she crying?  Her face was wet, but that was just because Bombur had cried on her, wasn’t it?  Was it?  

It felt like the best sort of dream, the kind where every terrible thing that has ever happened wasn’t real at all.  Where everything is light and warmth and no one has ever died.  And at the same time, she was dizzy and queasy and unsure her own legs would hold her. 

Nori nodded as if deciding she’d do, gave her a noisy kiss in the middle of her forehead, and then spun her around into yet another set of arms.

Thorin.  

She saw his rapturous smile falter  - not in recrimination, but in doubt.  Fear.  Guilt.  

Oh, no.  No, that could not be allowed.  Later, perhaps - no, definitely.  Later there would need to be words had and apologies made, on both their parts.  She still had the Arkenstone in her pocket, but she did not think he heard it whispering now - or if he did, he paid it no mind.  

And none of that, not one bit of it, was allowed to touch this moment.  

Bella flung her arms around him and reached up on the tips of her toes to bury her face in his neck.  

“You did it,” she murmured.  “Thorin, it’s over.  You’ve done it.  It’s done.”  

“I - I don’t -”  His voice was thick and strange and there were, again, tears running into her hair.  His arms were loose around her, one hand clutching in her jacket at the small of her back.  “Bella.  Tell me this is real.”  

She clung tighter, digging her nose into his skin until it was as if she breathed his wild pulse.  “It’s real.  I swear it.  It’s real.”  

His arms wrapped tight, crushing her to his chest.  A shudder ran through him.  “It’s done.”

“It’s done,” she affirmed.  “I love you.”  

“I love you,” he repeated. 

Then Dwalin’s voice rang out in Khuzdul; she would not yet say she knew their language perfectly, but she’d learned it well enough to understand these words.

“All hail Thorin, son of the Thráin, son of Thrór!  King under the Mountain!” 

And then a chorus of,  _ “Hail!” _

Bella stepped back out of Thorin’s arms, but he caught her hand and held it so that she, too, faced the company.

“Hail to the king!” Dwalin bellowed, this time in the common tongue.

_ “Hail to the king!”  _ Bella joined her voice to the rest, turning to smile at him.  _ “Hail!” _

Thorin stood, regal and solemn, accepting the acclaim with a nod.  He held up a hand, and the hails ceased.

“My friends,” he said.  “My brothers.  I called, and you answered, when none else did.  You fought when it seemed hope was lost.  What is a king, without a people?  I may be its king, but Erebor is not mine but yours.  It is I who should hail you, for your loyalty is beyond what any king could hope to deserve, your bravery the makings of legend, your honor an example to all peoples everywhere.  No matter what riches are now ours, know that I value your friendship beyond all things.  You shall be first and most honored of all our people, now and always.  Hail to the Lords of Erebor!” 

“Hail!” Bella cried out, grinning from ear to ear.

The answering calls were a bit slow and sheepish at first, but then they all turned to one another.  In hailing not themselves but their companions, their voices grew in strength.  Hands clapped shoulders and there were renewed embraces, more knocking of foreheads and more tears. 

Thorin drew her in close to his side and leaned down to whisper in her ear.  “Might you be willing to wait for your cakes?”

Oh dear.  But he was right – the moment was right, and she’d best get used to it.

She nodded.

“My lords!” Thorin called out, and they all again composed themselves.  “Where would we be without our burglar?” 

“Dead, that’s where!” Nori shouted back, and there was laughter and cheering. 

“Then let her blade, named Sting, be remembered and revered!”

More cheering. 

“Let her be known as Belladonna Light-foot!”

Oh Green Lady, was he going to –

“Belladonna the Clever-Tongued!”

Yes, yes he was. 

“Orc-Slayer!  Spidersbane!” 

Each title caused a new round of raucous adulation.  Bella wasn’t sure if she wanted to sink into the stone or evaporate up into the air – whether what she was feeling was embarrassment or joy or pride.  And suddenly, it was as though all the endless trudging, the thousand small aches, the hunger and the doubt and the stench that was the reality of their quest just fell to dust – and left behind was something out of one of her books, her stories.

“Belladonna the Dauntless!”

This was what she’d dreamed of as a little, little girl – this, and she’d done it and it was real. 

“My lords, my friends, my people – I give to you your queen!” 

 


	14. Almost home

The dragon had left splatters and streaks and footprints of gold leading from the Gallery of Kings into the entrance hall, through the ruined gate, into the courtyard beyond.  

“Just paint the whole thing in gold,” Dwalin suggested, as they stood in the gateway and stared.  “We’ve got enough of it.”

“I wouldn’t like the thought of the beast’s footsteps remaining beneath it,” Balin countered, and Bella inwardly agreed; the idea made her a little sick.  “They should be scoured away, along with every other trace of it.”

No one argued that.  

No one said anything at all, for long minutes in which Bella became slowly aware of being miserably cold.  It was a damp morning, the sun not yet risen, and the wind was biting.  The tips of her ears throbbed and stung, and she was afraid that if she touched them, she’d find blisters.  Her feet ached.

Her _everything_ ached.  

She still held Thorin’s hand, and was reluctant to let go; for this moment (for as long as she could stretch it), things were right between them.  

“Erebor is ours,” he said.  “We need not linger on the doorstep.”  

And yet, none of them moved.  More than one pair of eyes turned to him, questioning.  

“The hour is too late and the night has been too long for more ceremony,” Thorin sighed.  “Some other day, we will march proudly through these doors with banners waving, but for now, I care not who enters first or how.  Let’s get in out of cold.”

It was Ori who ventured first through the shattered gate, his steps slow and reverent, though the rest followed quickly enough - no one, Bella thought, wished to be left outside alone.

Despite his words, Thorin was the last, and Bella thought that no accident - or hoped it was not, anyhow.  It was a very Thorin-ish thing to do, and as such, reassuring.  

“It’s so big,” Ori murmured.  He turned to his brothers with wide eyes.  “You could fit our whole delving back home in this room.”

“I thought it might seem smaller,” Nori said.  “Since I was smaller the last time I saw it.  Doesn’t, though.”  

“No, it doesn’t,” Dori agreed.  

“Do you remember the way home from here?” Nori asked.  “Do you think it’s still there, just like we left it?”

“All your little toy miners all over the floor,” Dori said, hushed.  “A pot still on the stove.”

Bifur wander past Ori, looking up and humming softly as he did so; Bombur followed after him.

“None of us should be wandering off alone just yet,” Glóin said.  “We don’t know what sort of damage the dragon’s done to the stability of the roads.”

“Agreed,” said Thorin.  “We are all too weary to be as cautious as we should, and we must have a care to disturb as little as we can that is not our own.  There are many more to come, those who could not make this journey.  

“That there may be,” Nori observed.  “But there’s more that _didn’t_ than _couldn’t_.  Plenty of able bodies resting easy back in Ered Luin.  Not saying we take what’s theirs,” he added, at the glowers he had earned, “but if we leave our footprints in their dust, I think that’s a thing they could stand to forgive.”

“And the dead?” Gloin asked.  “Do we leave them as we find them?”

“That doesn’t seem right,” Ori said.  “Though . . . their kin might want to know how they fell?”

“No one needs to see that,” Dori said.  “Not like what we found.”

“I would,” said Bombur, at which all eyes turned to him; it was rare enough that he spoke at all, much less contradict anyone.  

“If it were my wife, my little ones,” Bombur went on, “I’d want to see, no matter how many years it had been, or what their state.  Our Da’s in here somewhere, Bofur’s and mine -  likely a pile of bones at the bottom of a mine shaft.  And it’s our place to find him.”

“We will shroud the dead, but leave them where they lay, unless they are known to us,” Thorin pronounced, “or have fallen in some public place that must be repaired at once.  Where that is so, Ori -”

Ori spun sharply at the sound of Thorin’s voice, startled, as though his mind had already wandered away down some dusty hall.

“You have been keeping a record of our quest, have you not?”

“Yes?”

“You will record, to the smallest detail, how we find any bones that must be moved.  If it is a sight fit to be seen, you will draw them how they lay.  Their kin may look or no, but we will not deny them the right.”

Ori gave a single nod, chin high and spine straight..

“We will keep to the entryway and the receiving halls, for what remains of this night and the coming day,” Thorin said.  “Until we have all taken some rest, and may be trusted to be more sure of foot and sound of reason.  We know those places have borne the dragon’s weight; they will bear ours.”

“I would like to know,” said Balin, “who slew the dragon, and how.”

“As would I,” Thorin agreed.  “And to have the rest of our company with us.  What has happened here must be explained to the men of the lake, as well.”

“I’ll go get the lads,” said Dwalin.  “I’ve marched longer on less sleep for poorer reasons.”

“And so have I, brother,” Balin added, “So have I.  It’d best be the two of us; you’re a fine fighter,” he said to Dwalin, “but no diplomat.”  

Dwalin snorted, as if to say what he thought of diplomacy, but he did not disagree.

“Bring as much gold as you can carry,” Thorin told them.  “Try to see that some of it ends in hands other than the Master’s, though I realize I may be setting you an impossible task in that.”

“Bid the dragonslayer return to the mountain with you, as well as the Master and whatever retainers or kin either may wish to bring.  Buy food while you are there; enough plain fare to sustain us several days, and meat and wine for a small feast for ourselves and our guests.  Hire a barge and mules and wagons if you need them, and be sure that the common folk know that all will be welcome here as soon as we may be certain that our streets are sound.”

“Yes, my king,” Balin answered, his voice full of warmth and pride, and he and Dwalin went off toward the treasury.  

It took a long time for their footsteps to fade away, in the otherwise encompassing quiet.  The rest of them remained just inside the door, less like wanderers returned home and more like guests unsure of their welcome.  At their backs the wind muttered across the gaping hole that had been the gate, but inside all was still as a tomb - which, Bella thought uneasily, it _was_.  The dead within far outnumbered the living.  

It would be easy, very easy, if she let herself, to begin to feel unwelcome here, Bella thought.  Hobbits did not belong in such vast, deep spaces, full of echoes and a visceral sense of weight above.

But dwarves certainly did, and her dwarves looked no more comfortable than she felt.  Thorin clung to her hand just as resolutely as she to him.  The others’ eyes explored, but their boots only shuffled a little where they stood.  The sounds of clothes shifting and leather scuffing stone seemed far louder than they had any right to be.  

Bombur finally took a long look at the remaining group, nodded as though he had reached some conclusion, and sat down on the floor in the middle of the hall.  He swung his pack around into his lap and began to set out what provisions they had; a flask of ale, a block of hard cheese, some smoked and salted fish wrapped in paper.  The flask clattered and the paper rustled, and it seemed somehow rude, and wrong.  

But it had been a good long time since last she ate, and now that she was reminded of the fact, her stomach felt almost painfully empty.

“Go on,” Dori said to Ori, “Get something to eat.”

The sound of his voice very nearly made Bella jump - or perhaps there was nothing near about it, as Thorin’s hand tightened around hers.  She looked up at him, and hated how uncertain she felt in doing so.

He was frowning.

“You should eat something,” Bella said, quickly, before he could speak and say something she wasn’t ready to hear.  “Even if you’re not hungry, if you’re too tired to be hungry, you’ll have a headache when you wake if you go to sleep with an empty stomach.”

His expression went soft and warm, though there was a grim and haunted look about his eyes that remained.  “Is this the wisdom of hobbits?”

“I would say it’s just good sense,” Bella said, “but perhaps.”  

“And you would care, now, if my head ached?” he asked, more softly still, for no ears but hers.  “You would not think that I had earned that and worse?”

“Of course I wouldn’t,” Bella whispered back.  “Or rather, even if you had, I still wouldn’t wish it on you.  Thorin, I - not here.  Not now.  But of course I still - still.  I do.”  She swallowed.  There was more sense to be found in a head of cabbage, Bella thought, than in that jumble of words. “And it’s not as if I didn’t - _I woke the damned dragon_ , Thorin, I nearly got us all killed.”

“That is no mark against your honor,” he said.  

“I don’t really care about honor very much, at the moment,” Bella insisted, and heard more feeling in her own words than she’d known they possessed.  “And we can’t stand here whispering and looking unhappy much longer or it’s going to look odd, and I don’t especially want to have to make explanations.  I don’t think I _have_ explanations to make, and I will be needing them, but for now, Thorin - nothing that truly matters has changed.  Not for me.”  

“Nor I,” Thorin said.  

“Then that’s alright,” Bella sighed.  “Or right enough to allow for supper in the mean time, anyway.”

“We will speak further.”

“Yes,” Bella said.  “We will.  But go get some fish, salty food is good for when you’ve had a shock.”

The others were already seated, but rearranged themselves to give Bella and Thorin room.  The stone was hard and cold, the fish so salty it burned her tongue and otherwise tasteless, and the cheese so hard it crumbled when they tried to break it into pieces.  Even so, it was food in her belly, and Thorin sat close enough that their hands brushed as they reached for this and that, and their knees bumped if either moved even a little.  

Balin and Dwalin returned while they ate, burdened with sacks of coins that looked as though they must outweigh their bearers.  They had also donned armor that was, if rather dented and tarnished, still very clearly fine and, more importantly, bearing the heraldry of Erebor.  They paused long enough to eat and drink a little, and then went out into the brightening day.  

The rest finished more slowly, though none of them ate very much, Bella noted.  When they were done Bombur wrapped every last scrap up carefully.  Dori brought out the rest of their supplies - flint and rope and small tools, bandages and needles and thread, lamp oil and wax for the waterproofing of boots and cloaks - and the two sat together, assessing, speaking in low tones as they arranged it all in a corner.  Ori took out book and quill and was quickly absorbed in recording the day’s events.  Glóin, likewise, sat down to write, though Bella thought he was composing a letter.  From time to time he paused, muttering and squinting, fingers moving in the empty air as if shifting beads on an abacus.  Nori set to sharpening his knives.  

“Bella,” Thorin said, and beckoned her toward a doorway that lead off to the side from the main hall.  “Would you come speak with me?”

“Of course,” she answered, and hoped her voice did not sound too odd.

But if the sly looks she got as she made her way across the chamber were any indication, no one suspected anything amiss between herself and Thorin.  Rather the opposite.  That was twice in as many days that she’d been subject to such an assumption; at some point, she thought glumly, she’d really like for it to be true.  

“You must grow weary of my apologies,” Thorin said, once they had gone far enough for privacy.  He stared off down the hall into the dark.  “Though they grow no less needful.  How fare you, truly?  Are you burned?”

“A little,” Bella said, “but not badly.  Nothing worse than a sunburn, I think, except for my ears.  They got the worst of it - but even so, I’m not the one who was on fire.”

“Nor are you a dwarf, whose skin can withstand the touch of molten metal.”

Bella gave him an incredulous look, which he must have felt, because his eyes darted sideways to meet hers - just for a moment, then away again.

“It is bearable,” he added, “not comfortable.  And some metals flow cooler than others.”

Bella felt herself choking on a giggle; it escaped as a half-thwarted snort.

“I’m sorry, that was - was just really inappropriate,” Bella said, at the look Thorin gave her, and then had to stifle another laugh behind her hand.  “It’s just - I don’t know what to do!  What do we do now?  Was there a plan for this part?  Because if there was, it was a poor one, because we’re all just wandering around like - like chickens that escaped their coop!”

“Chickens,” Thorin repeated.

“Inappropriate!” Bella said.  “I said it was - I know it’s - oh, hang it all.”  And she found the nearest wall and sat, her back to it, her legs splayed out in front of her in a way that she could just about hear her cousin Lobelia calling unladylike, and how ridiculous was that, really?  Of all the things to think of just then!  

Thorin sat across from her, mirroring her pose; the hall was narrow enough that their feet almost touched.

“I wouldn’t mind if you sat beside me,” Bella said.  “I’m not angry.  I won’t promise that I won’t be later, but right now I’m mostly tired, and I like the way you smell.”  

She really hadn’t meant to say that last.

“You still have the Arkenstone in your coat,” Thorin answered.

“Oh.”  She sighed.

“Yes.”

“Is it still . . . you seem better,” she ventured tentatively.   _You had your arms around me, had it pressed into your belly, and didn’t try to take it then._

“I hear it, still,” he said, and would not meet her eyes.  “But I am again myself, or believe I am, for as much as that may be worth, which I suspect is little.  I did not feel bespelled or ensnared before, but full of a fury that seemed my own.  It was the sort of rage that comes of pain, of fear - I can remember feeling these things, but not the reason for it.  I felt . . . besieged.  That is a good word for it.”

“You don’t feel that way now?”

“I do feel that way now,” Thorin said, “but I believe I know friend from foe, and can defend against it.”  And at that, his eyes caught hers.  “I would thank you, tell you how right you were and how sorry I am, but the words sound too practiced and too petty when I think them.  I will endeavor to be worthy of the loyalty you have given me.”

Bella let that settle in her mind for a moment, biting back her first impulse, which was to deny that there was any need for such an effort.  

“Thank you,” she finally said, softly, a little embarrassed - very poor manners, by hobbitish standards, to let such a statement stand.  

But Thorin sighed in a way that sounded relieved, and she felt better for that quiet little acknowledgement that yes, she had been hurt.  So perhaps that was alright.  

“Why would it do that?” Bella asked, more because something in her chest had loosened and the words slipped out with weary ease than because she expected any answer.  “Why would a stone make you see enemies all around, what’s the point of that?”

“Must there be one?” Thorin asked, and he sounded resigned.  “It has become corrupted, and it seeks to corrupt.”

“Yes,” Bella said, and wriggled until she was sitting up a bit straighter.  “Yes, there must; that thing has caused a great deal of grief, I would understand why.”

“I would just have it gone,” Thorin said.  “If I thought I could, I would cast it down the deepest well, into the darkest crack in the earth that I could find, and be done with it.”

“You think you couldn’t?” Bella asked, and tried - and failed - not to sound frightened.

“I don’t know.  I would not like to test it.  And it matters not; my people will come, and they will expect to see it.”

“Tell them the dragon ate it?”

He chuckled, a little, at that.  “They would hire men to dive to the bottom of the lake and cut it from his gut.  They would -”  Another snort of laughter.  “They would dig through dragon dung, oh Mahal, there’s a giant pile of dragon shit somewhere in this mountain, isn’t there?”

“I suppose there must be,” Bella agreed, grimacing.

“And it’s full of bones,” Thorin concluded, voice going soft and low, and it ceased to be funny at all.  

“Maybe they’ll care more about putting those bones to rest,” Bella offered, “than some thrice-damned stone.”

“It is the heart of the mountain,” Thorin said, still softly.  “Nothing will make them forget that.”

“Why do you call it that?” Bella asked, and yawned, and couldn’t even be bothered to cover her mouth.  If she wriggled her toes forward just a little, could she reach the tip of his boot?  And goodness but what a mess her feet were, the toenails all cracked and the hair knotted and half singed off.  Lobelia would faint.

It was almost enough to make her smile; she really was so very, very tired.

“Because that is what it is,” Thorin answered.  “We should find you a bed.”

“No, I’m fine here, thanks,” Bella said.  “Don’t want to move.  What do you mean, that’s what it is?”

“It is the heart of the mountain,” Thorin repeated, and sounded ever so faintly amused, as if she were being very dim - were she not so sleepy, she might have had something to say about that.  “I do not know how else to explain it; it formed in heat and pressure and darkness at the mountain’s very core, a gem unique in all the world, this one mountain’s heart.”

His words spun through her half-dreaming brain and twined with the memory of stone giants, her ring of invisibility that made her want to keep it hidden, the good earth of the Shire and how she could find no edible mushrooms in Mirkwood despite that everything was rotting.  A thought came together in her mind, and it was as though she heard his words again, and far more clearly.  She was abruptly wide awake.  

“Wait - what?” Bella asked.  “Really?  That’s not just some fancy title you gave it because it’s very impressive?  You don’t mean it’s  . . . oh, I don’t know, the symbolic heart of the kingdom - you mean it’s the actual heart of the actual mountain?”

“Yes,” Thorin said.  “Of course.  I didn’t realize you hadn’t understood.”

“Thorin, that’s - for pity’s sake - what happens when you cut out something’s heart?”

She could see in his face that he understood her meaning, but he said, “Stone cannot die.”

“No, no it can’t, but I think maybe it can get very, very angry,” Bella insisted.  “Thorin, I think you need to put it _back._ ”

^*^*^*^


	15. The Heart of the Mountain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER SPECIFIC WARNING: There are descriptions of survivors having been trapped in the mountain for some time, here, messages carved in walls and such, and reference to a group suicide in those circumstances.

***

“But where exactly is ‘back’?” Nori asked doubtfully.  

“You’d have been too small to pay it much mind when it was found,” Dori answered him, “but I remember it, and I’d wager our king does too.   _That_ isn’t the problem.”

“Aye, I remember,” Thorin said.  “Though I do not believe the stairs were yet completed when the dragon came, the scaffolding should remain.”  He turned to Bella.  “There were plans to build a temple; my father thought it fitting.”  

Bella tucked that detail away, one more piece in a slowly assembling puzzle that she had mentally labeled, ‘what produced Thorin Oakenshield.’  His father had been devout.  

“Well, that’s convenient,” she said.  “We’ll just tuck the stone back into the . . . well, stone . . . and build the temple around it, which, if I may say so, might have been a wiser idea in the first place.  And anyone who wishes to see the heart of the mountain may go to it, with proper respect.”

They stood around her in a circle, while she held the Arkenstone out with two hands, cradled in her palms.  Some of her loathing for it had faded, now she understood it better; in truth, she nearly pitied it.  

It would have sounded ridiculous to her, just hours ago, talking of pitying a stone - but if dwarves felt for stone as hobbits felt for earth and growing things, then there must be something, some living spirit, for them to perceive.  Something that, itself, could also feel.

None of that changed the way her dwarves were looking at the thing, or how uneasy it made her.  Thorin was guarded, his spine rigid and his eyes tight with what looked very much like pain, but the others -

\- the others frightened her, a bit, though she’d have trusted any one of them with her life, and for goodness’ sake, Ori was about as frightening as a dormouse, _really_.

But there was a sharp hunger to even Ori’s countenance, and a furtive tension that brought to mind a predator about to spring.  

None of them seemed so wholly overcome by it as Thorin had been, and none of them did spring - but she still wished they’d back up just a pace or two.  

“I see no reason to delay,” Bella added, when the silence had stretched uncomfortably long.  “I know we’re all tired, but it’s - well, I just think it’s better dealt with immediately.”

“The first thing I do,” Thorin said, in a strained, hollow voice, “as King under the Mountain.”

“Will be to restore the mountain,” Bella insisted, but gently.  “To put things to rights.”

“Yes,” Thorin said, but he grimaced and briefly shut his eyes, before nodding firmly.  “Yes.”  

“What,” Glóin said, and Bella thought he spoke very, very carefully, “can a hobbit know, of putting a mountain right?”

“That’s your queen!” Dori snapped, rounding on him.

“I mean no disrespect!” Glóin retorted.  “But halflings don’t know stone the way dwarves do, just the same as dwarves don’t know . . . well I don’t know!  Flowers and things!  We should wait for Óin, he’s studied the arcane mysteries, he will know -”

“We will not be waiting for Óin,” Thorin said.  “Bella is right; this is how we must begin, lest old wrongs taint all that we would do here.”

“Better make finishing those stairs the next thing,” Nori said, “so folk can go down and see it, or they might get it into their heads that you don’t really have it.  That you never found it at all.  Wouldn’t be good, to have folk thinking that.”  He paused, and then said, “Would be better yet to finish the stairs first.  Keep it on display a little while.”

“Fili and Kili should get to see it,” Ori put in.  

“They will see it,” Bella said, “in the temple.  Which we will finish as soon as is possible, though making sure the whole place isn’t about to fall down around our ears on account of the pillars the dragon knocked out might be something of a priority, too.”

“Are you so sure it’s the stone that’s got you out of sorts?” Glóin asked Thorin.  “The dragon gave us all a few good knocks on the head.”

“I am sure,” Thorin answered.

“Even so, Óin could just have a look -”

“Enough!” Thorin bellowed.  “Is this how it is to be, then?  My sanity questioned, my every order met with bickering and doubt?  This is the respect you would show your king?”

His last word echoed in the ensuing silence.  They all stood frozen, eyes round and wary.   

Thorin took a deep and shuddering breath and bowed his head.  He took a step backward, and another arduous breath, and another.  

“My friends,” he said, low and shamed, “forgive me.  I have no better proof than this to give you.”    

“We don’t doubt you,” Ori said, with all the artless reverence of a child trying to comfort a parent.  “It’s only that it’s  . . . it’s the _Arkenstone._ ”

“It will still be the Arkenstone,” Bella replied, “back where it belongs.  In fact, I think it will be all the more what it is, or rather, what it was meant to be.”

“That,” Dori said, scowling, “sounds like something the wizard would say.”

“Good,” Bella answered.

^*^*^*^

The mountain was vast and the former mine shaft they were seeking was, unsurprisingly, at its center.  Thorin lead the way, with Bella just behind him, the Arkenstone once more tucked into her coat.

It was a long, dark way there, and not as silent as she would have liked.  She did not mind so much the scritching of mice or the skittering of insects - these were normal enough sounds, though fewer and farther between than seemed right for a place so long abandoned.  

But things dripped, somewhere off in the dark.  What she told herself firmly was just the stirring of air across the mouth of some tunnel made a sound like a moan.  And then there was the deep, groaning vibration, too subtle to be called a tremor; stone shifting and settling.

“The dragon may have shaken the mountain, but it will hold,” Thorin told her -  quietly, but even so, his voice seemed to stretch out into the empty spaces around them.  “These halls were carved with great skill and care, knowing that the earth itself is not still.  Half the walls and pillars you see could fall to dust, and yet it would hold.”

“That’s well and good for the city as a whole,” Bella said, “but less reassuring if we happen to be standing upon or beneath one of those less than integral pillars.  You said yourself that the roads might not be safe.”

“True enough,” he answered, “but _you_ have said that this is the path we must take, and so we must trust it.”

“Oh, I know.  I’m only fretting, pay me no mind,” Bella grumbled.  And then, more softly, “You do believe I’m right, don’t you?  You’re not only doing this because - ”  

She glanced over her shoulder, and five pairs of sullen eyes were hastily averted.  Bifur just kept on staring, and made no pretense otherwise.

Bella picked up her step to match Thorin’s and leaned in close.  “Well, because.”

“I would do much to make amends to you,” he responded, his head bent close to hers, so that she thought, perhaps, they kept most of the words to themselves.  “But -”  he gave her a grim and assessing look.  “Not this, if I did not believe it to be right. This - it is like a shape that was hidden in shadows, obscured until you pointed it out to me, but obvious now.  It seems impossible that I could not see it before. I do this not because you ask it of me, but for the good of my people, and because it is a wrong that I would see made right.”  

“Good.”  Bella nodded.  “That’s good.”

“I have chosen my queen well,” Thorin said, with a small smile.

“We’ll see,” Bella answered.

^*^*^*^

They walked through what felt like miles of vast, open halls and arching bridges over seemingly bottomless caverns before they came to the city proper, but eventually the way did narrow and branch, and the walls crept closer.  

There were fewer grand gates and more simple doors, their carvings and adornments more varied and less formal.  Stairs led up and sideways and over the road they took, the structures stacked in a way that seemed to defy gravity.  Between them, and on their roofs and beneath the upper stories’ floors, were flat open spaces, from small alcoves to wide squares at the junctures of streets.  

In these carts and tables were overturned, and goods of every kind lay scattered.  There were sculptures half gone to rubble, banners long faded and decayed, and what looked for all the world like garden beds, though Bella couldn’t image what would grow by torchlight .

And there were bones, not so well preserved as those in the western guardroom; just piles of sticks and the domes of skulls like overturned bowls, laying in the sad tatters of their clothes.

“Should I -” Ori began to ask faintly.

“Not now,” Thorin answered.  “Touch nothing, and let them rest; we have no need to disturb them.”

“I think I remember this place,” Nori said.  “That stairway, there, did we -”

“Every market day,” Dori answered.  “You cracked your chin on those stairs I don’t know how many times, trying to run ahead.”

Glóin was murmuring something under his breath, a collection of repeating syllables that Bella could not quite decipher - whether he said prayers for the dead or muttered charms to protect against their ghosts, she didn’t know.  Many doors stood ajar, and in many of them hasty messages had been scratched - _‘WENT EAST AND DOWN’_ or _‘SOUTH PASSAGE; HAVE THE CHILDREN.'_

In one of the open market squares blankets had been piled and crude tents pitched; lanterns still stood on the edge of a fountain.  On the wall words were carved, with more care than Bella had yet seen.

_‘HELD HERE TWENTY-SEVEN DAYS.  WATER STOPPED.  GOING TO DEEP CAVES.’_

Then something in runes that Bella could not read, and below that, also in Dwarvish letters, a long list.

No one called for a halt, but they paused.  “Are those - ?” she began.

“Names,” Dori affirmed.  

“Could they have made it out?” Ori asked.

Bifur muttered something, and Dori shook his head.  “Those caves don’t go out, just down and further down, to water.”

“They weren’t looking to get out,” Nori said, “Just to cheat the dragon of a meal.  Maybe die with a bit of peace.”

Bombur shuffled up to the wall with a look of both determination and fear on his face.  His spine was straight and his shoulders square as his eyes ran down the names; then he sagged, and moved back.  

Dori turned to him.  “Is your -”

“No,” Bombur said, shaking his head.  “Didn’t think so, in this delving, but you never know.  Had to check.”

“There’s some there I knew.  My wife’s cousin, for one,” Glóin said, though he sounded only tired, and Bella didn’t know what to say - what expression of sympathy could possibly be appropriate to this?  She could think of nothing that would not make a mockery of the magnitude of the horror.

“Twenty-seven days,” Glóin mused, and then gave a firm nod.  “And no quarter given to the enemy, even in death.  There’s honor in that.”

“There is,” Bombur concurred.

“What does it say over them?” Bella asked.  “The dwarvish - if you can tell me, that is.”

“You’ve heard our most sacred song already,” Glóin said, “and I don’t suppose you can be our queen and not know our letters.”

“ _‘May the work of our hands endure,’_ ” Thorin read.  “Come.  We have lingered here too long.”

Several minutes of somber, wordless trudging passed before Bella blurted out, “I’d been thinking it was quick.  That the dragon just killed everyone, all at once.  I should have realized; he took his time taunting me.”

And that was a horrible thing to have said; why on earth had she said that?  Could she not, just once, keep control of her tongue?

“A swift annihilation would have been a mercy,” Thorin replied, his voice low and dark.  “There is no mercy in a dragon.”

^*^*^*^

Thorin had been right - the stairs were incomplete, but the steel scaffolding was still present and in good repair.  That did not make it an easy climb down, though difficult as it was for Bella, who was just a bit too small for the spacing of every rung on every ladder, it was harder still for Bombur.  He was simply not made for climbing - and if he could do it without complaint, then so could she.  

That made her notice a strange thing, besides - none of them were complaining anymore, and there was far less glaring.  Perhaps they were simply too stunned and sobered by what they had seen on the way (much of which Bella wished she could forget immediately, and knew she never, ever would), but it seemed to her that the nearer they drew to the mountain’s heart, the less they resented their course.  

As if the Arkenstone affected them less and less; as if it knew they were bringing it home.

The unfinished temple was little more than a single square room cut into the side of the mineshaft, though the shapes of doorways and elaborate carvings were still sketched out on its walls in chalk.  A single pillar of polished rock stood at its center, less than a foot in diameter - and in the center of that, about half-way up, a jagged hole.  

“There?” Bella asked.

“There,” Thorin replied, and gave a shaking sigh.  

She would have liked very much to ask him if the Arkenstone’s whispering was any quieter, or less malevolent, but that seemed unwise in their present, perhaps-still-influenced-she-couldn’t-really-be-sure, company.

“Do we just . . . sit it there?” Ori asked.

“There ought to be words said,” Glóin protested.  “Something.”

Bifur appeared to agree, emphatically.  

“I don’t know what words should be said, but Thorin -”  And Bella drew in a deep, fortifying breath, unsure even as she spoke if this was really a good idea.  “ - I think you should be the one to do it.”

All eyes turned to her, but her eyes were for Thorin alone.  Good idea or no, it just felt necessary - perhaps for the sake of inherited debts and the honor of the line of Durin, but also for things to be properly settled between the two of them.  And if those two things really ought not to weigh so near to equal in her mind - well, she was only a hobbit, and rather far out of her depth.  

“I thought the whole point of this,” Glóin said, “was that the Arkenstone drives kings mad.  Don’t you all look at me that way, it needed saying!”

“Kings who seek to possess it.  To keep it for their own,” Thorin corrected.  He looked again to Bella.  “You would have me prove myself otherwise.”

“For yourself, and your people,” Bella said.  “And I think . . . well, we hobbits hold that a garden tended with love will grow better.”  At the looks that earned her - from all but Thorin, who still watched her as if he expected her to pass judgment on him - her chin came up.  They could think her just as silly as they pleased, it wasn’t she who’d made this mess.  “So perhaps a mountain will have a better opinion of a king who has shown it some kindness.  Some respect.”

Nori raised a doubting brow, Glóin turned away muttering - she caught the words ‘foreign notions’ - but Thorin nodded.

“So be it,” he said.  

Trying not to tremble (failing, miserably), Bella drew the Arkenstone out of her coat.  There was a collective indrawn breath, and then a stillness, a palpable sensation of awe and longing that filled the small space.

Thorin reached out for it with both hands, and when their fingers touched she felt that he, too, shook.  She drew away, just half a pace, her rushing pulse making the blistered tips of her ears throb.

He stood with it cradled in his palms, unmoving, unblinking - and then he gave a short, wondering laugh.

“It is so light,” Thorin said.  Then he strode to the pillar.

There was a shuffling of feet and a turning of bodies; none took a step closer, but they all leaned in as if simultaneously drawn and afraid to move.

“I, Thorin, son of Thráin, son of Thrór,” he said, “now return to the mountain its heart, and pledge that it will not be taken again, for so long as my people hold sway here.  This I swear upon my honor and the honor of my house.”

He set the stone, oh so very, very carefully, within the hole from whence it was cut.  Then he backed away.

“The wrong we have done is righted; our debt is paid, and we will be a free people once more.”

There was no great tremor in the stone beneath their feet, no cataclysmic sound or flash of blinding light.  It was, really, not so very much at all like such things were in stories, Bella thought.

What happened was that a small bit of crumbled stone fell from the upper arch of the hole in which the Arkenstone sat, and settled around it.  It did not cover the stone very much, only provide it a kind of nest.  And that was all.

But perhaps the dwarves felt something she did not, because when she looked away from the stone, she saw that their faces were dazed.  Awed, and reverent, beyond what the first sight of the stone had evoked.

“Oh,” Ori said, very softly, as if in revelation.  

That certainly seemed like a good sign, but it wasn’t very definitive.  So Bella went to the stone, and because she was still a hobbit, no matter how embroiled in the affairs of dwarves she became, said, “Pardon the intrusion,” before she prodded gently at that little fall of pebbles.

Which was now solid rock, as if it had been so since the dawn of time.

“I think,” she said, “the mountain accepts your apology.”

And Thorin laughed.


	16. A Wager Won

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER SPECIFIC WARNING: The affect of Smaug falling into the lake just sort of Laketown is a bit tsunami-ish; there is brief description of natural-disaster-like aftermath.

One of Tauriel’s earliest memories was of the death of a tree.

It was an ancient thing, its trunk twice as wide as the height of an elf, the span of its branches too immense for a child to fathom.  It looked as though it had stood since the dawning of the world - but it had grown brittle with age, its leaves few and the fissures in its bark many.

And one winter day, when the ice lay thick on its branches, it fell.

Tauriel remembered a sound so large and deep that ‘sound’ seemed the wrong word; it was felt as much as heard, a noise like a blow, and the very earth leapt and trembled.  It happened in the night, and she was woken by it, the ceiling above her cracking and raining bits of rock and moss down on her.  

The next day the whole of the court - perhaps the whole of their people - went out into the nearby forest to be witness to the great tree’s end.  There were solemn songs and remembrances - and then the woodcutters and the carpenters got to work.  Tauriel gained a small writing desk from the death of that tree.

But what she remembered most was looking around - small, fidgety creature that she was, and made uncomfortable by the pervasive sadness of the gathering - and noting all the _other_ trees that had fallen.  Tangled in the giant’s branches, they had been ripped from the ground when it fell.  Young trees.

Bows and harps were made of this supple, green wood, but Tauriel did not yet know that, as she stood there taking measure of the destruction.  All she saw, then, was needless death and waste, and it churned in her belly.

“It should have been cut down before it fell,” she’d said, chin up, defiant, certain as she spoke that she was earning herself many days of instruction and enforced contemplation on the error of her ways.  “So that it would not have felled so many other trees.  It isn’t fair; now they will never be great and old.”

Legolas, who had been something like a much elder brother to her (only not, and that was clear to her as far back as she could remember - the royal family might give her shelter, treat her as if she were a little sister, but she was not, ever, to treat them as her kin) had given her an odd look, at that.  It was not quite the expression of exasperated censure that she had expected.

The next day he had given her a bow and a set of knives, and her lessons began to include instruction in their use.  It was many years before she understood why.  

The dragon fell, and struck the water, and Tauriel was thrown back in memory to the fall of the great tree.  

The whole town rose and fell and splintered and cracked.  Screamed.  Waves poured over the streets and the tower on which Tauriel still stood split down the center and began to fall.  

She chased it down as she would run downward through the branches of trees, leaping from one falling fragment to another, and found herself standing on a free-floating remnant of what had once been a path.  The water was still restless, lapping as high as her knees before withdrawing and pulling her little raft low.  Around her was chaos.

Laketown had been built with some good sense, to withstand the inevitable turbulence of water; much of it was held together with rope, able to expand and contract and sway.  Even so, it had not been meant to sustain such a shock as this, and the bow tower was not the only structure to have fallen.  The first, highest wave had put out some of the fires, but others were starting, and everywhere were cries for help.  

And so it was many hours before Tauriel found her way back to the house where the dwarves sheltered, though she worked steadily in that direction.  On the way between she climbed shattered buildings to douse fires or retrieve children trapped in the crumbling heights.  She cleared rubble, bound wounds, made poultices for burns.  And when she was asked, over and over again, how the king of the Woodland Realm had known to send aid so quickly, and whether more elves were coming, she did not know how to answer.  

It was well past midday when she found herself back where she had begun before dawn; the house still stood, though a jagged crack ran up its side, and the stairs had broken free and fallen away.  A rope ladder had been rigged in their place.  This she climbed, then knocked on the wall beside the door, which hung off-kilter and did not quite close.

The door opened a crack, and the youngest daughter peered through, wary until she recognized Tauriel.

“Bain said you killed the dragon,” she breathed, throwing the door wide open and looking up at Tauriel in frank awe.

“Yes,” Tauriel said.

“Da says thank-you,” the girl recited.  “And to tell you that you’re welcome beneath our roof, and your - your friend, too.”  At which the girl blushed.  

Tauriel smiled; Legolas would be amused.  “That is most generous.  Thank you.”  

“Da was arrested, but the gaol fell apart and the guards told him to just go.  He’s out helping now,” Tilda went on, obliviously content to be having this conversation in the doorway with Tauriel perched on the edge of the ominously creaking porch.  “Bain and Sigrid went with him, and most of the dwarves - we did better than most everybody else, none of us were really hurt and our house stood up well.”  There was pride in her voice at this.

“I’m glad that you are safe,” Tauriel said.  “It is a fine house.”

“Our grandda built the first part of it,” Tilda went on.  “And then Da built the rest, and he bought the glass windows for a present for Ma when they got married.  Elves made them.  Did you shoot the dragon where great-great-grandda hit it and knocked a scale off?  Kili - he’s the dwarf that was hurt, the one whose leg you fixed - he said you probably shot it through the eye, but Bain thought you could have shot it where the missing scale was.”

“I would have been glad to honor your forefather’s legacy if I could,” Tauriel answered, “but I could not see the loosened scale.  There was a great deal of smoke.  I shot it in the mouth.”

Tilda winced and her face screwed up in an expression of both admiration and disgust.  “Did it see you?  Were you scared?”

“I do not know if it saw me,” Tauriel said.  “I was afraid that I would miss, and waste your one black arrow.”

“But not of the dragon?” Tilda pressed, clearly wanting to hear that Tauriel had not been.

“I was afraid, but I put the fear from my mind, because there was a thing I had to do,” Tauriel told her.  “Now, however - now, I am afraid these boards are going to crack and I’m going to fall into your lake, which is quite icy cold.”

“Oh,” Tilda said, and stepped out of the doorway.  “Don’t fall in the lake, it would be awfully stupid to die of a chill when the dragon didn’t kill you.”  

Tauriel hid her smile as she stepped inside - and abruptly realized that Tilda had said that _most_ of the dwarves had gone out to help the townspeople.  

Most, not all.  

Kili sat on the floor in the middle of the room.  There was a game board of some kind sketched out in chalk beside him, with small tools and kitchen implements being used for pieces.  

“Kili is teaching me a dwarf game,” Tilda informed her.  “He says sometimes people play for _years._ ”  Her tone was doubtful, and she gave Tauriel a sidelong look as if expecting the elf to know the truth of the matter.  

Touched and humbled as she was by the high regard the girl clearly had for her, very little of Tauriel’s attention was left to the human child.  All of it was fixed on the dwarf sitting right there, awake and aware and with some healthy color back in his face, no more than a few paces from her.

“Tauriel,” he said - and then tried to stand.

“Stop that, you’ll hurt your leg again!” Tilda exclaimed; she reached Kili before Tauriel did, and gave his shoulder a firm shove downward.  “I’m ‘sposed to watch you, you’ll get me in trouble!”

Tauriel hastily sat, legs crossed, in front of him.  Seated, they were nearly of equal height.  “She is right, you must rest.  The poison may be gone from your wound but -”

“I’m told I have you to thank for that,” he said.

“ - it still must heal.”  She paused, suddenly shy to speak of her part in his healing.  “Yes, though I could not have done without the herbs your companion found.”

“You elves take a wager very seriously,” he observed, but in a way that made it a question.

“I did,” Tauriel said.  “Whether it is the way of all elves, I could not say; I have often been told I take many things too seriously.”

“Well, that’ll teach you to bet against the resourcefulness of dwarves,” he answered, still in that cautious, testing way.

“I am glad,” Tauriel said more softly, “that I bet against a dwarf.”

“Are you?” he asked.

“I am.  Though that is not why I came.”

Tilda was surreptitiously moving a spoon on the chalk game board and listening, all shifting eyes and careful silence, clearly aware of overhearing private and grown-up things.  

Kili swallowed, his throat bobbing.  “So.  Friends, then?”

“If that is what you wish,” Tauriel said.  

“What I wish -”  He glanced sideways to Tilda, whose hands flew away from the game board.  

“I’m going to make supper,” the girl pronounced, and scurried off toward the kitchen - which was just across the room and on the other side of a broken table and in no way out of hearing.  

“What I wish, well,” Kili said.  “What I wish might be reckless.”  

“I have left behind my lands and my people and everything I have ever know,” Tauriel told him.  “I defied the orders of my king; I have made myself an oathbreaker and an outcast at the very least.  By law my life is forfeit for such treachery - and I can regret none of it. Today I slew a dragon.  Reckless . . . suits me,” Tauriel concluded.

For a moment Kili just blinked at her; there was silence from the direction of the kitchen, and then a flurry of slamming drawers and clanking pans.

“Well, right then,” Kili finally said, and gave her a lopsided smile.  “In that case - I should make you a gift.  Not jewelry or beads, not yet.  Something useful to your art or trade would be traditional.”  

He paused, considering, and Tauriel let him - watched him, and gathered up the way his brow creased and the restlessness of his hands and the set of his jaw like these were gifts themselves.  How unlike her he was - and yet, there was understanding in his eyes when he watched her, and behind the teasing, a gentleness she had not known she craved.  

“I might make you arrows,” he said, “Or a set of knives, if I were feeling bold.  That would be risky, for a first gift - because knives can be worn, see, and if you did wear them, we’d be as good as declared for one another.  On the other hand, if you weren’t as sure of me as I was of you, I could find myself turned down altogether, where you might have accepted something less binding.  So starting there - that would be reckless.”

“And are you so sure of me?” Tauriel asked.

“Completely,” he said, and for just a moment, was utterly solemn - but only a moment.  “And besides that, you’re far too good not to be wielding dwarven steel.”

“I would accept your knives,” Tauriel said, “and wear them with pride.”

“Would you really?” Kili asked, earnest and hopeful in a way that sent heat rushing up the back of her neck.

“I would,” she repeated, and felt as if she stood upon a ledge all enshrouded in mist, unable to gauge the depth of the drop.

“You’ll have them,” Kili promised, “Just as soon -” He faltered, just for a moment.  Then his chin came up and his eyes went fierce.  “They’ll be the first new weapons forged in Erebor - no one will be able to say they shouldn’t be, you being the dragonslayer.  Maybe I’ll dive down to the bottom of the lake, to where the dragon fell, and get you dragon bone for their hilts.  I’d carve it with runes - charms of protection, or should it be the tale of how you slew the beast?” he asked, frowning and tilting his head.  “Which would you prefer?”

“I’d prefer you not drown yourself,” Tauriel said.  “Dwarves are not known to be strong swimmers.”

“I’m not so bad,” he protested; then, at her doubtful look, amended, “I’ll devise a system of hooks and pulleys, then, to drag the carcass back to the surface.”

“You have a talent for such things?” she asked, honestly curious.

“No, not really,” Kili admitted.  “But I can figure most things out if I there’s a need, and I’m not _terrible_ at engineering.  Uncle would never have allowed -”  

Again, he stopped.

“They may yet live,” Tauriel said softly.

“What?  No, I’m sure they do,” Kili said.  “I was just about to say, Uncle made us study all sorts of things.  Not just warfare and statecraft and finance with some trade or other thrown in for show, the usual stuff for nobility - he wanted us to know how to build with wood, mend our boots, tan leather.  Everything he had to pick up along the way, you know?  He was hard on us about it, sometimes - not cruel, just determined, there was no giving up on something because you didn’t have a knack for it.  Of course he’s not dead; he couldn’t -”

And again he had to stop himself, his voice gone ragged.

“It couldn’t end like that,” Kili concluded, very quietly, in a way that said he understood very well that it could.  

Tauriel reached for his hand, and he reached back, twining their fingers together and clutching tight.

“The dragon was wounded,” she said.  “Grievously so; had I not shot it down it might have fallen _on_ this town, and taken us all into the depths with it.  Your kin fought, and well.  Do not despair for them.”

“I’m not,” he said.  “But I should have been there.”

To that, she could say nothing; had he followed his uncle to the mountain, he would not have been in Laketown when she arrived, and he would have died.  

Had she not tried to hinder their escape, they would have been far down the river by the time the orcs reached the gate.  He would have had no cause to climb out of his barrel, and might not have been wounded.

If they had never been taken prisoner, but been offered aid instead -

But then, she may as well suppose what might have been had Thranduil aided Erebor when first the dragon came - when she was just on the cusp of coming of age, and without the slightest authority to do anything at all.  And had all that been changed, Kili might never have even been conceived.  Neither would the human girl clanking and clattering around in the kitchen.  This house would never have been built, no gift ever made of glass windows - which had, against all odds, withstood the dragon’s fall better than the wood around them.  There was a thin crack running the length of one pane, but that was all the damage she could see.  

And though she could not imagine why she should be so moved by windows, she looked at them and suddenly felt as though the weight of all that she had left behind came crashing down upon her.  She was without a home, without friends save the one whose hand she now held, without even her honor.  

She did not regret, and never would - _never_ , she insisted to herself.  She had done what was right and needful and the sharp joy of righteousness that had so abruptly now abandoned her had been true.  This well of sadness that threatened to swallow her - it would pass.  She was only tired.  She knew the torpor that came when the rush of battle faded; this was no more than that.  

“Tauriel?”

Of course he saw, and she was so grateful for it that she felt on the verge of tears, just like that.

“Pay me no mind,” she said.  “I am not myself; it will pass.”

“Happens after a fight,” he said, and gave her hand a squeeze.

“Yes,” she said, and the feeling that she might burst into tears vanished, replaced in an instant by a fond exasperation.  “I know.”

“Well, right,” he said, abashed but undeterred.  “All I meant was that I understand - and anyway, for all you may have seen more battles than me, I doubt you’ve ever killed a dragon before.”  He paused.  “You haven’t, have you?”

“No,” she said, and laughed, and the last bit of feeling she had left drained away and she was hollow, utterly hollow.  “I have never before left the Greenwood.”

“Never?”

“I have left the borders of the Woodland Realm,” she said, slow and careful of her words - not ‘our borders,’ not ‘home’.  “I ventured as far south as the mountains.”

“To walk in starlight,” he said softly, with something near to reverence.  “I imagine the view from the peak of the Lonely Mountain is something to see.”

“Yes,” she agreed, and smiled.  “It must be.”

“We’ve still got those spiders to take care of, don’t forget - and someone will have to go back to Ered Luin, to escort our people home,” Kili said.  “We saw some things on the journey here - most of them were awful and trying to kill us,” he allowed, “but not all of them.  I think you’d like Rivendell.  Though - well, maybe we’d stop there.  I don’t suppose Lord Elrond ever came to the Greenwood - that you would know if he’s a forgiving sort?”

“That,” Tauriel said, “is the start of a tale.”  

And the look on his face was all poorly feigned innocence, as if it hadn’t been his clear intention to pique her curiosity.  “Is it?

“You should save the tale for supper, if it is fit for a child to hear,” she said.

“Oh, it is.”  He paused a blink.  “Mostly.  Depends how I tell it.  Certain bits could be left out.”’  His eyes drifted to the game board.  “I could teach you to play, in the mean time?”

And she realized, feeling dull and late to do so, that he craved the distraction too - of course he did.  Grey and strange as her thoughts might be, she was not the one waiting on news of a triumph or a tragedy.  

“I would like that,” she answered, though she felt certain that anything she was taught right now, she would forget within the hour.  “Very much.”


	17. The Throne of the King

After having traveled to the very center of Erebor and climbed down centuries-old scaffolding, keeping to the entrance halls for fear of instability in the roads seemed a bit pointless.  They had already passed within a stone’s throw of Dori and Nori’s old home, and if they were to be permitted to see what had become of it and and their neighbors, it seemed cruel to forbid Bombur the same.  

He and Bofur had been just babies when the mountain fell, but had, it seemed, been raised so steeped in tales of it than he felt certain he could find his way.  His family had not been so well-to-do, and had dwelled nearer the mines, so he and Bifur were the first to break off from the company.  Bifur had been a soldier, and would have lived somewhere between his cousins and the brothers Ri, but if he knew his way back or wished to go there, he gave no indication.  

Gloin, too, had little memory of the mountain - while older than Bombur, near to Nori in age and with a few childish recollections, his family had escaped intact and done well enough for themselves in exile.  He had not been raised by a grieving mother, and the mountain’s loss had not loomed so large over his formative years.  He was there for the sake of the next generation, not the last - for a heritage he wanted for his son.  

Even so, he had grown up near to where the Ri brothers did, as had his wife, and her family had not been so lucky.  He went with them.

That left Bella and Thorin on their own.

“Tell me what you wish to see,” Thorin said.

 _The backs of my own eyelids, for a good long while,_ was Bella’s first thought.  “You don’t want to see your old . . . house?  Halls?  What do you call the place where the royal family lives, if they live under a mountain?”

“Halls,” Thorin said, with a small smile.  

Bella raised a brow, still questioning.

“They will be empty,” he said, and Bella felt the words like a pain in her chest.  “I have done all I set out to do, and still . . . they will be empty.”

He would have looked away, as though the admission shamed him - as though she had not seen him overwhelmed by grief before.  She  grabbed his hand and, when he turned back to her, put her arms around him.  

“No they won’t,” Bella said, and tucked her chin into the hollow of his shoulder.  He returned the embrace, but carefully - things between them were still not as they had been before the Arkenstone.

And while most of her wanted nothing more than for all of that to be put behind them, there was a quiet little corner of her mind where she welcomed his reticence, and was appeased.  She didn’t like it, but there it was, and perhaps it was as it should be.

“I know all about empty houses, Thorin,” she said, pushing thornier thoughts aside.  “And I swear that’s not how your halls will seem - they’ll be full of the people you’ve lost, in every room where you sat together and all the things they loved.  It’ll set you to weeping, probably quite a lot, at first, but the very last thing they’ll be is empty.  Trust me.”

“I do,” he murmured into her hair.  

“I feel like I’m asking you to do that an awful lot,” she said, drawing far enough away to look up and see his face, but not letting go.

“You have yet to be wrong,” Thorin answered, still with that soft, melancholy smile.  

She ought to have known better, but she hadn’t thought it would be like this - she’d imagined celebration, at the end.

“Still, at some point we’re really going to settle in here, with a kingdom to rule, and I’m not going to know spring from winter when it comes to that,” she said.  “I don’t intend to boss you about forever.”

“That is good to know,” he said, and his smile was a little less sad.

“But by tomorrow we’re going to need somewhere to put all the people you sent Balin and Dwalin to invite,” Bella added.  “Had you thought of that?”

“No,” Thorin admitted, grimacing.  “There are guest quarters near to the throne, and they would have been empty when the dragon came.  But the way may not be clear, and I will not have that so-called ‘Master’ of Laketown walking among the bones of our dead.”

“Then that’s the way we should walk.”  She paused a moment.  “How do you air rooms, under a mountain?”

She had the sinking feeling that she was going to be adding ‘under a mountain’ to a great many inquiries in the days to come, about things she knew very well how to do when nearer to the surface of the ground.

“I have no idea,” Thorin admitted.   

“No, I guess you wouldn’t,” Bella said.  “Princes don’t beat rugs, do they?”

“This one has, and will again, if it is needful,” he said, as they walked. Thorin guided her along the way with one hand hovering near the small of her back, not quite resting there.  “But not when I lived here, and not once we settled again beneath stone in Ered Luin.  It cannot be so different.”

“Except that you’ll be raining dust down on someone else’s roof,” Bella pointed out. “And where do you put your kitchen scraps?  And the plumbing -”

“That,” Thorin said, “I do know, and will happily show you, once it has been cleaned and set to working again.  That is a marvel, such as you will not have seen in the dwellings of elves or men.”

“The plumbing?” Bella asked doubtfully.

“Indeed,” he said, and there was more pride in his voice than she could account for on the subject of pipes and toilets, but was glad to see anyhow.  “I do not think I will tell you.”

“I will endeavor to be appropriate impressed,” Bella said, with a smirk, “when shown.”

“It will be no effort,” Thorin insisted.  “Of all the wonders of the mountain, you may like that one best.”  

“If you say so,” Bella said.  Then, half for her own curiosity and half to keep him talking, and his sorrow and doubt at bay, she asked, “Were those garden beds I saw, in the market squares and by the doorsteps of houses?”

“They were,” Thorin said, giving her a sidelong look that said clearly that he did not understand the need for the question.

“What can you grow -” And she would _not_ say ‘under a mountain’ again so soon, hang it all.  “Without sunlight?”

“Many things,” Thorin said, “Mushrooms to eat, and many kinds of fungi for their beauty.  The royal gardens were never an interest of mine, though I understand they were renown among dwarves; they are yours to bring back to life, if you would like.”

“Ornamental _fungus?_ ” Bella said, and tried to keep from making a face.

She failed, clearly, if the way he was now smirking was any indication.  “I will have many things to show you, it seems.  You will need to ask another how to make the spores grow again, but they should remain, waiting - that much, I can recall being taught of the things we grew.  Like our people, they are made to endure.”

The first thing that brought to her mind was how difficult it had been, in Bag End, to keep the floor boards in the bathrooms free of mold.  She kept that thought to herself.

“I suppose I’ve seen some pretty sorts of things on rotting logs,” she said.  “I’d just never thought of growing them on purpose, like prized roses.  But mushrooms - I do know something of those.  I was quite the expert at hunting them out, when I was younger.”

“You did not cultivate them?” Thorin asked, again sounding puzzled.

“There wasn’t really a need,” Bella said, “with how well and plentifully they grew on their own, in the woods.  And I’m not sure I would know how, though I suppose I could work it out - I knew where to look, what sort of places and things they liked, and I’d guess it would just be a matter of replicating those sorts of things.  They like damp,” she concluded, and gave him a sly look.  “I suppose they’ll be happy to see your marvelous plumbing back in order, too.”

“I will remember your doubt,” Thorin said, “and remind you of it, when the time comes.”

“I will be chastened,” Bella replied, with a great lack of concern.

The further they walked, the farther the buildings sat from the road, with only open space between and beneath.  The paths that branched out became fewer and fewer, and spaced farther and farther apart, until there was only the one long bridge, and stairs leading up and up.  There was a pale light from beyond it - daylight, she thought (and then belatedly wondered how there had been any light at all in the rest of the mountain; it was dim, to be sure, but no darker than an open field at night, which made not a bit of sense.  Another thing to ask, that.)

There were no railings here, and the stone beneath their feet was polished to a near mirror shine.  To either side was a row of enormous statues, not dissimilar to those who stood in the Hall of Kings, though these were all identical, armored like guards standing eternal watch.  Each had an axe, held ceremonially straight, the stone blades adorn with patterns and symbols and inlaid with gold.  And unlike much of the mountain, she could actually see a roof of stone over their heads - unpolished stone, pouring down in an enormous stalactite with ribbons of gold running through it.  It narrowed and narrowed, and though she could not yet see where it ended - there being more stairs ahead, and more beyond that - she gathered that its tip met with the apex of the bridge.  

“This is the way to the guest quarters?” she asked doubtfully.  

“To the throne of the king,” Thorin said.  “Since we joined the path that guests would take from the entrance halls, the way has been clear - and was clear that far when we set out for the mines.  That is the dragon’s doing,” he concluded darkly.  “I know that many soldiers fell here, but they are gone now.”

“We’ll find some way to give them proper funerals,” Bella said.  “They’re not forgotten.”

“No - no, not forgotten.  The guest quarters,” he said, with grim determination.  “To reach them, we need only turn to the left back that way - but there is time for beating carpets.  I would show you this first.”  

She would have rather seen the places he lived, worked, played as a child - and besides that, the lack of railings here combined with the smooth surface of this stone was making her nervous.  She tried to tell herself that she had run along unguarded bridges narrower than this one while fleeing the dragon - but they’d been _fleeing a dragon_ _._  It was hard to fear a fall, in circumstances like those.  Now the danger had passed and her exhaustion had not.  

“We don’t know what state those rooms are in,” Bella pointed out.

“I know that I do not care, save for the room to be given to the dragonslayer.  The ‘Master’ may sleep on a rotting mattress full of fleas.”  But then he closed his eyes and pressed his lips into a grim line.  “But I must care.  I must care what that foul, ridiculous man thinks of the hospitality of Erebor, because we will need trade with Dale.”

“He’s easy enough to persuade, at least,” Bella said.  “Just promise him gold, and we’ve got plenty of that.  Lobelia never did give me her butter cake recipe, no matter how many times I invited her to tea.  Then again, I suppose I never gave her mine for venison stew, either.”  

“So you have some experience in negotiation, then,” Thorin said; his tone was incredulous, but when she looked sideways at him, there was a softness to his expression that took the edge from the words.  He looked almost grateful.

Bella opened her mouth, prepared to tease in return - but perhaps because she was so very tired (and there were so very many stairs), she found a lump forming in her throat.  He teased, yes - but how different that was, than his reaction had been back in Rivendell when she spoke of simple, hobbitish matters.  And how different, too, was she.

“Thank you,” she said, instead.

“For what?” he asked, and was suddenly guarded and wary again.

She wished he’d stop that - and yet, was glad he didn’t.  She thought that if he weren’t so desperately repentant, she might not wish that he wouldn’t be.

“Just thank you,” she said, and gave him a smile and a shrug.  “I’m glad Gandalf decided I should be a burglar.  If I tried to say more, I’d get it all wrong.”

He did not look reassured, but he answered, “So am I.”  

They walked a ways in quiet, until they came to the last of the stairs.  The path now lead straight to the dais on which the throne sat - and above it, the setting where the Arkenstone had been.  Bella stopped.

“Something will need to be done with that,” Thorin muttered; he did not need to explain to what he referred.  

His hand at her back urged her forward, and she went; she’d been right, she observed, that the enormous rock formation tapered down into the throne.  

Where Thorin would sit, because he was a king, and for pity’s sake it wasn’t as if she hadn’t known that, nor been sharply reminded of it several times in the past handful of days - and still it made her feel as if she were falling every time it was brought to her attention.  From that chair, the dwarf beside her - the dwarf who was to be her husband, who she loved, who she’d held while he wept - would rule a kingdom  

And she - but there was only the one throne.  Space to stand beside it, yes, but only one seat.  

It shouldn’t bother her, she scolded herself - she didn’t _want_ a throne.  

Did she?

One could do a great deal of good from a throne, as well as harm, and there were a great many things that needed doing in the world she had seen since she left the Shire.  She trusted Thorin to rule wisely and well, yes, but -

“I will not sit there, until there has been a coronation,” Thorin said; they had reached the dais.  “But I wanted you to see it first of all - and to look upon it myself as it is, empty and cold, and remember what it means.”

She could find no words to fit her thoughts.

“Bella?”

“There’s no seat for a queen,” Bella finally said.

“No,” Thorin said.  “There is not.”  He frowned, as though he had never truly noticed that before.  “One will be made; I will have you at my right hand, and all will know it.  Though -”  His frown deepened.  “- the throne of the king is one with the mountain, carved when first this place was made.  The stone beside it is cut away and gone; a queen’s throne cannot be made in the same way.”  

At least the thought seemed to disturb him, though the fact that it was clearly a very _new_ thought disturbed _her._

“Where did your grandmother sit?” she asked.  

“In her own halls,” Thorin answered, and had the good sense to speak the words with reluctance, watching her carefully.  “She stood beside him to receive noble guests, and sat beside him at table.”

 _Oh, well,_ Bella thought, though she bit her tongue on the words, _I suppose that’s alright, then, if they sat together at supper ._

“But not when he heard petitioners,” Bella guessed.  “Or did she hear petitioners herself, in her own halls?” she asked hopefully.  “Was it that matters were divided between them?”

She didn’t know why she was so bothered; there had never been a woman for Thain, had there?  It was not as though hobbits were any better.  It was just the way of the the world.

But now she was to be a queen - and queens, as she understood it, had some say in the ways of the world.  

“No,” Thorin said, and sighed.  “Truth be told, I am not certain how she spent her days, outside of the time we spent together. She was quiet,  and beautiful in an aged way, but more than that . . . I had not realized it before this moment, but I hardly knew her at all.  She died when I was still a child.  What role she played as queen, I cannot tell you.”

“I didn’t mean to cause you grief,” Bella murmured.  

“Amad, though - Mother - had a great gift for the loom,” Thorin said.  “She could weave a scene so real you might swear you looked through a window upon it - and with such care.  Every detail had meaning.  She painted, as well, but I think her true joy was in weaving.  She would lose herself in it, days and days at a time.  I remember sitting beside her when I was small, listening to her explaining what the images meant - histories and legends and fables, scenes out of the Ballad of Durin, songs.  Sometimes she wouldn’t explain, but would ask me to look, and tell her the story I saw.”

“The dragon took her - she escaped the mountain, but gravely injured.  She did not survive the day.  It felt . . .it still feels, as though much of what was best of us died with her.  There are others who know the same tales and songs, our histories are not forgotten, but there was something different in how she wove them.  A brightness.  But perhaps any child feels that way at the loss of his mother.”

“She sounds like my father,” Bella said, “Though his gift was for words.  Still, I think they’d have liked one another; he wrote _everything_ down.  Which sounds tedious, but it wasn’t; he just thought that more or less everything was important, or at least important enough to remember properly, and he made it all seem interesting, somehow”

“Yes,” Thorin said, “She’d have appreciated that.”

“I’d have liked to have met her.  Do you think any of her tapestries have survived?”

“Some must,” Thorin said, in a tone more of need than certainty.  “Fili has some of her gift, I think, though he has not had the chance to let it grow.  Now,” he said, with great determination, “now he will have that chance.”  

He turned to face her.  “Please do not think, because our queen did not rule beside the king, that we thought little of our women.  They were barred from no trade but this, and held positions of honor and authority in many a guild and council.  But the rule of the king was absolute.”  

“That is what your people will expect of you,” Bella ventured.

“They may,” Thorin answered, “Or they may not; those who still remember Erebor in its last days may think it no bad thing to have a king who shares his power.  Had there been one who could have forced my grandfather to moderation . . . but whatever they expect, what they will get is a queen who rules beside me, for her wisdom far exceeds my own.”

“I don’t know about that,” Bella said, her cheeks heating.

“I do,” Thorin insisted.  Then, with less certainty, “Bella, do you want this?  If you would rather be a queen as my mother was, and spend your days in pursuit of the things you love, in books and maps and gardens, then that is the life you will have.”  

“No, I -”  She paused.  “It sounds rather terrible to say that I want it, doesn’t it?”

“Does it?”

“Not from you!” Bella said.  “This is your birthright, what you were always meant to be.  From me, though, it seems  . . . well, greedy, and more than a bit too prideful.  To want such power.”  

“And yet?” Thorin insisted.

“And yet I do,” she sighed.  “Though ‘want’ may be the wrong word; I won’t shirk the hard parts.  If I’m going to be a queen, then a queen I will be, and just hope I don’t make a disaster of it.  It would feel wrong to do anything else.”

“I can think of no one I would trust more,” Thorin assured her.  “You won’t repeat the mistakes of our past; that, at least, is certain.”

“Neither will you,” Bella told him firmly.  “Thorin, you don’t have nearly as much to prove as you think you do; no one who knows you, no one who has ever _met_ you, could possibly believe you capable of losing sight of your duty to your people.  I’m more worried that you’ll hold yourself accountable for things beyond even a king’s power.”

“You see?” he said.  “Wisdom.”

“And that you will be unreasonably opposed to anything related to elves, regardless of its merits,” Bella added, and raised a brow.

He grimaced, but it was good-natured.  “It is fortunate, then, that I will have a queen who admires them so ardently, to whom I can entrust all relations with them.”

“In that case,” said Bella, “we’re sending Lord Elrond a very nice thank-you gift for his support of our quest.”

“He opposed our quest.  He would have stopped us.”

“I know,” Bella agreed.  “And he was right to be concerned - about the dragon, I mean, nothing else - but he also translated that map, and fed us and housed us for several days, besides.  And won’t your people need to pass by Rivendell on their way here from Ered Luin?  It would be a convenient place to stop for a rest, and to re-supply.  If we were all friends.”  At that Bella paused, considered her own words, and said, “You know, I think I may not be terrible at this, actually.”  

“Far from it,” Thorin said, with a wry smile, “but too forgiving.”

“If I am,” Bella retorted, “then between the two of us, we might just have a hope of being sensible.”

“You give me hope in many things,” Thorin said, and kissed her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some credit must be given to whoever did the background art for this game - http://www.dolldivine.com/hobbit-and-lotr-dress-up-game.php - for the idea of dwarves having mushroom gardens.


	18. Ravens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter involved SO MUCH RESEARCH. 
> 
> My interpretation of raven society, "naming", and such, is wildly conjectural, but based in at least a vague grain of truth. Ravens can recognize one another's voices, and they can imitate the voices of humans. I didn't make up (and wouldn't have made up) raven sexism, either; males really are dominant to females. I also tried hard to get the body language and general thought process on dominance and social relationships right. I'm still no raven expert, but I know a lot more than I did a few days ago.
> 
> So, um, yeah, here be ravens.

^*^*^*^

Though the guest quarters were spacious and little touched by the passage of time, they all slept that first night in the entrance hall, wrapped in blankets on the ground as they had through most of their journey.  Two of them stood watch at all times by the broken doors.  The stone was unforgiving and reminded Bella entirely too much of the cave that had dumped them into the goblins’ kingdom, but she was oddly glad of one more night spent with her companions nearby.  The next day or the day after, their guests would arrive, and she would have to go back to being respectable - which meant a room to herself, alone, until she and Thorin were married.  

However much she’d missed her soft bed these last months, she was not looking forward to that.  

The next day they went to work repairing the doors.

That was a task that Bella would have thought impossible, but saying so only got her seven disbelieving looks.

“You can’t heal stone,” Glóin said slowly.

“No?  You can’t?” Bella repeated.

Dori scoffed.  “You hobbits can’t, maybe.  Though - you’re sure it’s not just that your masons kept their secrets?”

There was a great deal of nodding, at that, and knowing looks.  

“I don’t think so,” Bella said.  “We can build with stone and mortar, of course, and repair - er, that’s not what you mean, is it?” she said, when mention of mortar earned her expressions of outright horror.

“We’ll only be patching it up,” Bombur offered.  “Until someone who really knows what they’re doing gets here.  I don’t think -”  He looked around, wary of offending, and got raised eyebrows and shrugs.  “What we here can do wouldn’t hold up, not more than a year or two, but better that than leaving it like this.”

Bifur said something both emphatic and incomprehensible, that involved suspicious glaring at the barren terrain around them; Bella guessed it was likely to do with the complete indefensibility of the gate as it stood now.  

“Dwarves don’t talk magic with foreign folk,” Nori said.  

“Magic?” Dori said.  “It’s hardly that.”  

“Aye, magic,” Nori asserted, and nodded his head once in Bella’s direction.  “To her, or anyone not a dwarf.  As good as.”

“There’s work to be done,” Thorin said.  “She’ll see.”  And he smiled, a very confident, knowing sort of smile, in Bella’s direction.

She raised a brow, challenging, at which his grin only broadened.

Healing stone, it seemed, involved an assortment of powders and tinctures and odd-smelling pastes, scavenged from within the mountain.  There were whole buildings, like apothecary shops, devoted to such things; every town and little village (delving, she learned) seemed to have one of its own.  There were special tools, too, oddly shaped and many of them so sharp and strange that Bella wasn’t sure of how to safely hold them.  

The use and application of all these arcane things required a great deal of careful scraping and chipping at the raw edges of the broken bits, mixing this and sifting that and dusting on another thing on oh-so-very carefully.  (There was also a fair amount of talking to the stone, humming it soothing songs, and patting it encouragingly; it made her think of gardening.)  

Bella, of course, could help with none of that, so she tried to make herself useful in the gathering of supplies.  None of the stone-apothecary shops had all of what they needed, at least not in sufficient quantity for so grand a project as they were undertaking.  There was some debate about trying to locate a larger storehouse, but it was eventually decided that it would be quicker and easier to haul small quantities from nearer the gate than to try to drag barrels of the stuff up from within the depths.  (Glóin kept a tally of everything they took, in case its rightful owners or their descendants yet lived, so that they could be compensated fairly).  And so, the process came to involve a lot of searching and fetching and exhausting climbing of stairs.  

Even that, it seemed, required some degree of dwarvish knowledge.

“Careful with that!” Dori exclaimed, as she approached with two large, heavy jars hugged to her chest.  He ran over and plucked first one and then the other from her grasp as if they weighed no more than feather pillows.  He set them down very, very carefully.  “Do you want to burn your skin off?”

“No, I don’t,” Bella responded.  “So perhaps next time you might tell me when you send me to fetch something that could.”

“Oh,” Dori said, brought up short.  “But everyone knows - er, right.”

“That’ll burn your skin off,” Nori interjected with a smirk, setting down his own burden.  Despite having only a child’s vague recollection of the mountain’s organization, he had been made the designated searcher, as he had a natural knack for it.  Bella just followed along and carried what he gave her.  

“Thank you,” Bella said, scowling at him.  “Good to know.”

“Wouldn’t have let you hurt yourself,” he said, shrugging.  “They’re well sealed.  He -”  A nod of his head at Dori.  “Fusses.”

“What if I’d dropped one?” Bella asked.

“Um. Well, that would’ve been bad,”  Nori acknowledged with a tilt of his head.

Dori gave a vindicated snort.  

So then Bella was reduced to sitting around watching them work, which was certainly interesting, but made her feel uncomfortably useless.  She brought them water to drink and rags to wipe their hands and faces, which was at least something of a contribution, but felt entirely too much like being relegated to women’s work.  

She felt somewhat better when Ori decided that this was an event that deserved recording, and sat down beside her with parchment and charcoal and began to sketch. (No one protested, which may have had something to do with Dori spending more time hovering over Ori whenever he made use of anything caustic or sharp than working himself, and thus slowing them all down).  Ori was more than happy to explain the work they were doing, from the use of the tools to the ingredients of the powders and how they worked, which was sufficiently strange and fascinating as to distract Bella from her wounded pride.

Also, hauling huge, jagged chunks of stone about and climbing walls to rig ropes and pulleys to lift that stone back into place was hot, sweaty work, despite the cold weather.  The dwarves had all stripped down to their undershirts and rolled up their sleeves.  Nori’s spiked hairstyle had collected so much dust that he looked nearly as gray as his elder brother, and Bombur had piled his beard on top of his head, where it bore an unfortunate resemblance to a loaf of braided bread.  Thorin, though -

There was nothing at all unfortunate about Thorin in his shirtsleeves.  

Thorin, intent on a task and with a looking of fierce concentration on his face.  Thorin, glancing her way now and again, smugly pleased and smiling at her marveling - and, perhaps, at her admiration, though she hoped it wasn’t so obvious.  

It made her wonder, her cheeks heating, how long a dwarvish betrothal was expected to last.  

By late morning the doors were repaired to near the height of the dwarves, and though the fissures where the stone had been rejoined could be seen, they were finer and the whole more sturdy-looking than she could have imagined.  

They paused just past midday for a meal.  Thorin sat close beside Bella, radiating heat   and the smells of stone and strange potions and sweat.  There was an ease and a confidence to his movements that she had not seen in him before, and both hunger and contentment in his eyes when he looked at her.

“Are your feet not cold?” he asked, and at the same time reached out to catch the betrothal bead braided into her hair.  He turned it between his fingers.  She could feel it in her scalp, and that small sensation seemed to travel from there down her spine, warm and strange.

“My feet?”

“The sky looks like snow,” Thorin said.  

“Maybe,” Bella acknowledged.  “Not for hours yet, though, it still smells mostly dry, and the clouds are too high.”

“And to think I was proud - a dwarf, to have mastered the skill of reading the weather,” Thorin said, with a small smile.  “Such things do not concern us, beneath the ground.”

“It _does_ look like snow,” she answered, appeasing.  

“The cold will not sting your bare skin?” There was a roughness in his voice, as he spoke, that sent her pulse clamoring in her chest.

“Not my feet,” she said.  “We hobbits have thick skin on our feet.  And surely you’ve noticed the fur.”

“Hrmm.”  It was a pleased, playful sort of hum.  “You’ve misplaced your beards.”

“Furry feet,” Bella said, “Are _far_ more sensible than furry faces.”

Then there was the sound of wings behind them.

Bella turned; there, on a chunk of broken rock, sat the largest raven she had ever seen.  It was easily half again the size of a cat.

The others stilled, staring, save Thorin, who rose slowly to his feet.  The raven stared back, tilting its head this way and that.  

Thorin took two steps nearer the bird, his hands held out to his sides, as unthreatening as he could hope to be.  “Friend, do you know us?” he asked.

The raven hopped to the side, looking around Thorin to those behind him and then back at him.  It bobbed its head and clacked its beak together.  Bella wanted to back away; that beak looked like it could do a great deal of damage.  

“We are the dwarves of Erebor returned,” Thorin tried again.  “We had heard that your kind, too, had reclaimed your ancient home.”

The bird ruffled its feathers and lifted its wings; there was a collective gasp of protest from the dwarves, but the raven only shook itself and then settled again.  

“Might be it’s just a bird,” Nori said reluctantly.

“No raven is just a bird,” Thorin said, and there was reverence in the words, and a look of longing on his face.  “They have will and reason near to that of a man, but the ravens of Erebor had something more.  Are you of that lineage?” he asked the bird.

Did he expect it to _speak?_  In the tongue of dwarves or men?  Gandalf had had conversations with the great eagles, yes, but in no language Bella could fathom, and Thorin hadn’t seemed to either.  

“It’s a good omen,” Glóin said determinedly, “Even if it doesn’t talk.”

“Could be they didn’t pass the language down,” Nori suggested.  “It wouldn’t have been of much use to them.”

“No,” Thorin said, shaking his head in denial of that.  “No, when they heard that the dragon had not been seen in many years, they returned, even before we did, though the world is full of places that a raven might make itself a home.  No, they would not have forgotten, nor failed to teach their heirs.”

“How long do they live?” Bombur asked.  

“Forty years or so,” Ori answered.  That earned him several dubious glances - including one from the raven - to which he answered, “I read about them!”

“Some I knew had seen a century or more,” Thorin said.  “Forty years might be a good life for a raven in the wilds, but in Erebor of old, they lived to see many generations of their descendants come into the world.”  

This seemed to catch the bird’s attention; it hopped closer, again ducking and bobbing its head and raising its wings just a little, close to its body.  Like a hatchling eager to be fed, Bella thought, though this raven looked fully grown.

Thorin tensed, eyes brightening, at its movement.  “Would you hear more, my friend?  Or is it that you have heard such tales before, and know us by them?”

“It looks like it’s hungry,” Bombur suggested.  “We could spare it a bit of meat.”

But the excitement in their voices, or perhaps the desperate eagerness of Thorin’s posture, unnerved the raven, and it hopped backward again.  It paced there, its head turned to one side and then the other, watching the dwarves with one round, black eye at a time.

“If not that, at the least you understand my words,”  Thorin insisted.  “Of that I am certain.  I am Thorin, son of Thráin, son of Thrór, King once more under the Mountain.  You need but speak to earn yourself a place of honor among us, for you are the first of your kind to seek us, and so must be one of the bravest.”

The bird cawed, and then made a sort of rattling, burbling sound.

“Pretty sure it’s just a bird,” Nori muttered, at which Dori shot him a glare - and so did the raven.  

 _“Dwarves,_ ” said the bird, in a voice that sounded uncannily like Nori’s.

A muted cheer went up, quickly stifled at a wave from Thorin.  Bella gaped.

“Dwarves were friends of old,” it said, sing-song.  “Remember dwarves were friends of old.  Dwarves remember?”

“Indeed, we remember our friends the ravens,” Thorin replied, and sounded as near to giddy as Bella had ever heard him.  

“Friends of dwarves lived wise and long,” the raven answered, still sounding like it was reciting a song or a poem.  “Shining gems had friends of dwarves.  Food in many hidden hoards.  Safe were skies when dwarves were friends.  Ravens wait for dwarves again.”  And it cocked its head questioningly.  “Remember?”

“You were taught this,” Thorin breathed.

“Friends of dwarves lived wise and long,” the bird sang.  Then, in a voice more like ordinary speech, “Dwarves gave ravens words to carry; dwarves could not fly when the beast of fire came, and ravens could not carry dwarves.  Dwarves cried warning; ravens remember.”

“We are deeply honored,” Thorin said.

“Dwarves would share their hunts again?” the raven asked.  “Ravens carried all the words we could, fathers feeding words to sons.”

“We would renew our old alliance, and count the ravens of Erebor as friends again,” Thorin affirmed.  “Do you speak for your people?”

The raven gave a caw and fluffed the feathers of its throat.  “Some dwarves are kings; ravens are fathers, sons, friends, enemies, strangers.  Some are strong and wise, others bow their heads to them.  It is one to another, another to another, not all to one.  I would be friend of dwarves; I have strong-eyed, wise friends.”

“You have no kings?” Ori asked, then winced at the quelling look Dori threw him.  Thorin seemed not to mind, though, and waited on the raven’s answer.

It made a jumble of sounds, none of which were words as Bella knew them, though they had the cadence of speech none the less.  Then it said, “I am king to some.  Some are king to me.  The sun changes, one finds a good hunt, another not, who bows changes.  Ravens remember friends, not kings.”

“What is your name, raven who would be our friend?” Thorin asked.  

It - he, Bella guessed, as it spoke of sons and fathers - puffed up in obvious pride as he said, “Names are dwarves things, gave to ravens to carry with their words, because dwarves cannot hear ravens.  After dwarves were gone, few fathers gave names to sons.  Ravens hear each other, need not names.  My fathers have remembered long, gave me a name.”  

“What do you - I’m sorry,” Ori cut off, giving Thorin a pleading look.  “It’s just - I’ve read a lot about them, and -”  He gestured feebly at the raven, as if to say, _but it’s right there, how can I not?_  Dori looked mortified, while Nori, on the other hand, looked inordinately proud.

“By all means, speak,” Thorin said.

“What do you mean, dwarves can’t hear ravens?” Ori asked.  “We hear you.”

“Not one raven,” the raven said.  “Hear all ravens, yes.  Hear one raven, no.  Cannot speak one raven to another.  Dwarves can only speak themselves, so you make names.”

“I, um - don’t understand?” Ori again looked questioningly at Thorin, who gestured for him to proceed.  “We?  We don’t understand?  Don’t . . . know the things you speak.”

The raven made more of its own sounds - spoke more of its own language, Bella was beginning to believe, then looked at Thorin, and recited, in exactly Thorin’s voice, “Thorin, son of Thráin, son of Thrór.”

“Yes,” Thorin agreed.

The bird turned to Ori - who had not given his name - and said in Ori’s voice, “Is your name.”  Then to Nori, in Nori’s voice, “Is your name.”

“No,” Ori shook his head, “We’re not all called Thorin, we all have different -”

The raven gave a frustrated-sounding caw, turned back to Thorin, and repeated, “Is your name,” but in Thorin’s voice.  Then, again to Ori, in Ori’s own voice, “Is your name.”  

“Oh!” exclaimed both Ori and Bella at nearly the same time.

“Oh, that is amazing,” Bella said.

“Is _your_ name,” the raven turned to her and said in her voice, and it was so strange and astonishing a thing to think on that it felt like receiving a gift.  

“Voices,” Thorin realized aloud.  “You each have your own voice, which our ears cannot discern, and you can speak with one another’s voices.  You have no need of names, when you can speak as another would.  I never knew this.”

“Like holding up a picture,” Ori said, and sounded just as delighted as Bella felt, “And saying, ‘I’m talking about him,’ the person whose likeness it is, only it’s a - a likeness of sounds.”

“Do you talk about places that way too?” Bella asked eagerly.  “If, say, you wanted to direct someone to a brook, would you make a running water sound?”

The raven looked at her, clacked its beak, and said in a disappointed sort of tone, “Few ravens remember names now.  My father and my father’s father remember.”

“We would hear your name,” Thorin said.

“I am -” and the nearest Bella could make of it was something like ‘Grӓc,’ though it was a very raven-ish sound that she would not otherwise have known for a name at all.

“Son of Roӓc,” the bird went on, and in a subtly different tone, she now noticed.  And in a different voice yet, one that sounded old and worn, “Son of Carc.”

“Carc was known to me,” Thorin said excitedly.  “He lives?”

“No,” Grӓc answered, and ducked his head.  “Father lives, but his years are heavy.  Father’s father flew beyond his wings, many years of old.  I am last of father’s sons; all my brothers have flown beyond.  The skies change, and dangers are many now, so we return here.  Hunts are few, but so are we, and we remember.”

“We are sorry for your troubles, and for your loss,” Thorin said, and the raven’s words seemed to settle like a weight on his shoulders.  “Which are in part of our making.”

“Beast of fire came to hunt dwarves,” Grӓc said.

“Yes,” Thorin answered, all his joy gone.  Bella wanted to stomp her foot and wail that it wasn’t fair; he’d been happy, _happy_ , hang it all.  

“Dwarves cried warning,” Grӓc said, and hopped from foot to foot.  “Father’s father remember that.”  

And Bella hadn’t known it was possible to swing from mournful frustration to a gratitude so huge she could have wept with it in the space of so few words, but Thorin had gone wide-eyed and wondering, at those words.  At being so easily forgiven.

“I call others?  Food?”  Grӓc said hopefully.

“Yes,” Thorin said, with a long, deep breath.  “We have little, yet, but what we have is also yours.  Soon, very soon, we will feast, and you with us.”

“Yes,” said Grӓc.  “Good.”  

He flew up to sit on the helm of one of the carven stone sentinels at the side of the gate and began to call, loudly and repeatedly, the sound echoing down through the barren valley.  It took not long at all for more black-winged forms to take to the sky in the distance, flying back toward to Erebor.

^*^*^*^

Nine ravens joined them, in all, including Grӓc’s father Roӓc, who was ancient and had one clouded eye.  Grӓc had something like a betrothed, as well; they were visibly devoted to one another, but not yet nested together, which was apparently as near to marriage as ravens came.  She was one of only two females, had no dwarvish name, and was a quiet, wary creature.  

Ravens, it appeared, were not unlike dwarves or men or every other confounded creature on the face of the earth, in that the males were in charge - in response to which, Bella made a point of sharing her own plate with the lady ravens and only the lady ravens (who seemed confused by this, but happy enough not to have to wait for their food.)  

After a meal, it was ravenish custom and an important point of friendship and trust to groom one another.  This, Thorin remembered and expected - expected so much, unfortunately, that he did not think to warn the younger dwarves.  There was very nearly an incident, as Nori did not take kindly to a raven trying to land on his head, and then again when Ori tried to approach one of the females.  That was apparently very much not done - or rather, was done, but as the initiation of a courtship.  A courtship between a dwarf and a raven being, of course, more than a bit ridiculous, Ori’s accidental overtures were interpreted as a joke and an insult.  It took some minutes and a great deal of struggling to find words in order to repair the misunderstanding, though that was helped along a bit by Ori looking obviously, utterly confused and miserable about it.

It did explain why none of the ravens were approaching Bella, which had been making her feel a bit hurt.  She was no happier about it, really, once she understood, but at least it wasn’t personal.  

The sun went down, and the ravens cautiously followed the dwarves into the relative safety of the mountain - though before the dwarves could re-enter the mountain, they had to cobble together a ladder. In their enthusiasm to repair the doors they’d all forgotten to account for the fact that the hinges, too, were bent and ruined, and thus the doors would not open. Though they were repaired to less than a quarter of their full height, that was still too tall to easily climb.   

Perhaps taking pity on him after the earlier debacle, Roӓc settled down to talk with Ori.  He spoke far better than his son, and was happy to do so, while Ori hastily copied down his every word.  Grӓc had very much claimed Thorin, and never ventured far from his side.  The rest found places to sleep here and there.

Bella woke at some dark hour to see Thorin climbing the ladder up the door and staring out into the night.  It was cold and damp and she really didn’t want to leave her blankets, but she got up and went to him all the same.  

“It will take them time to gather supplies,” Bella said.

“I know,” Thorin answered quietly; the others, dwarves and ravens alike, slept on undisturbed.

“You’re worried about Kíli.”

“Tell me I did right to leave him behind.”

“Of course you did,” Bella said, and did not add, _but you could have been kinder about it_.  “He couldn’t have walked so far on that leg, he’d have torn the wound open over and over, it would have gotten infected -”

“That was not what I was thinking, at the time.”

“But it is what you are thinking _now_ ,” Bella answered.

“We were still leagues away from the Arkenstone.”

She had no immediate answer to that.  He looked down at her from where he stood on the broken edge of the door, scrutinizing her for a long moment in the dim light, then climbed down and sat at the base of the ladder.  She sat beside him, leaning in, and he put an arm around her.  

“I did not know how the ravens named - or not named,” he said, frustrated.  “How they were known to one another, among themselves.  There are the likenesses of ravens on the crown of my forefathers, and I did not know that.”

“You’ll do better,” Bella insisted - and tried to hush the small voice in her head that began to be impatient with all his repeated doubting.  Had he never thought of any of this in all the years of his exile, that these thoughts were such an unpleasant shock to him now?

Oh, but that was a cruel, unfair thing to think.  What did she know of it?

“You’ve made your first alliance,” she pointed out, trying to imbue her voice with an optimism that it was a struggle to feel; he really _could_ have been kinder to Kíli.  

The look he gave her was doubtful, and careful and far too sharp, and oh hang it all, he knew.  

“Tell Kili you’re sorry for how you spoke to him, sorry you didn’t think of how he must have felt,” she finally said.  “You mean it, and he’ll know that.”  

That, she knew, was not the extent of his fear - nor hers, if she let herself think on it.  Kíli was young, and strong, and the arrow had hit nothing vital -

\- but her father had only broken his leg.

No.  No, he would be fine.  He might have a limp hereafter, but he would be _fine_.

“And Fíli?”  Thorin said, after a long enough pause that Bella knew he’d been thinking much the same thing.

“That . . . may take longer,” she conceded.  And if Kíli -

 _No._  

“You’ll just have to do your best to make it right.”

“That,” Thorin said heavily, “is all that I have ever done - and it will never _be_ done, will it?”

“No,” Bella answered.  “I don’t suppose it will.”


	19. Reunion

They spotted the barge coming across the lake near first light.  By mid-morning it was at the shore, and by a little past noon the party from Laketown had reached the overlook.  A figure stood there a moment, waving a flag of blue cloth with a black shape emblazoned on it - a raven, Bella realized after a moment.  Then it disappeared back behind the crag.

“Was that Fíli?” Bella asked hopefully.  She thought, perhaps, that the figure had been of dwarvish proportions and fair-haired, but could not make out more than that.

“It must have been,” Thorin answered; he had done little through the rapidly passing day but keep watch over the caravan’s progress.  “Why would they have sewn a flag of Erebor, however crude, if not to let us know that its heirs are alive and well?”

Bella could imagine other reasons, but said, “Yes - yes, you’re right.  Must be.”

But Thorin did not abandon his watch.  

The ravens were not particularly pleased to see wagons of men and dwarves passing into the ruins of Dale, having taken up residence there themselves, and most of them flew off to keep a closer eye on the proceedings.  Grac remained, though he took up a perch above the gate.  

The ruins hid the travelers’ progress until the sun was nearly set.  From there, they made their way slowly across the rough terrain of the valley, a procession of mule-drawn carts lurching along.  More than once the caravan stopped entirely, and  Bella could only presume that a great many wagon-wheels were lost to the endeavor.  

As they neared, the others joined Thorin and Bella at the gate, all straining their eyes to see.  In the gathering dark the party from Laketown were nothing but shadows.  Then torches were lit. and the forms that had been growing ever more obscured were suddenly clear to see.  

Kíli rode in one of the wagons, Fíli walking along to his left.  Balin and Dwalin walked behind them, followed by Bofur and Óin.

Thorin sagged, a ragged sigh falling from his lips.

The Master of the Lake had come, of course, with that man Alfrid (what position he held, exactly, Bella wasn’t sure - the first word that came to her mind was ‘sycophant,’ but she doubted that was an official title), a man and a woman in servants’ garb, and four guards.  She thought one of them was the one Bard had called Braga; the other three she did not know.  

Bard himself was there, along with a cloaked and hooded figure - slender and female, and walking to Kíli’s other side - that Bella thought must be his elder daughter, though her hood obscured her face.  She was relieved to see them living and well, but given how Bard had last spoken to Thorin, that was bound to be an awkward meeting.  

Bella wondered if it was her job to smooth that over - was that a thing queens did?  She thought it might be, and she liked Bard well enough.  He hadn’t exactly been wrong, either.  

“He insults us,” Thorin grumbled, at her side.

“What?  Who?” Bella asked.

“The Master,” Ori answered her.  “By bringing his own guards.  Not trusting us to provide safe passage, even though we sent fighters.  I read about it!” he said, halfway between defiant and cringing, when he realized that he had again spoken before Thorin could answer for himself and that everyone was, again, staring at him.  

“Don’t interrupt your king!” Dori hissed at him.

“I didn’t mean to,” Ori muttered.

“He did not interrupt,” Thorin said, looking amused, “And is it not his duty to understand such things, as a member of the king’s court?”

“Oh,” Dori said.  “Well, yes, of course.”

“But while we host foreign . . dignitaries,” Thorin said, grimacing as if applying that word to the Master left a foul taste in his mouth, “Ori, you must keep your insights silent, lest they undermine the authority I am seen to have among my people. I will be glad to hear them later, in council.”

“Council?” Ori breathed.

“Did I not grant you lordship?”

“Yes?”

“Oi,” Nori interrupted, and nodded his head down toward the valley.  The caravan had picked up what remained of the old road from Erebor to Dale, and their pace had quickened; they would be within hearing in minutes.

“Maybe one of the guards slew the dragon,” Bella suggested, at which she received only expressions of incredulity.  “Well, someone did.”  She lowered her voice.  “Anyway, I doubt the Master actually means to insult you.  He’s just.  Well.”

“Not much of a dignitary,” Nori said.  

““If he has a drop of noble blood anywhere in his lineage,” Glóin said, “I’ll cut my beard.”

“Half the company doesn’t either,” Ori pointed out, and whether it was meant as a challenge or an expression of hurt, Bella couldn’t be sure.  “Even Bella’s -”  But he stopped, and gave her an inquisitive look.

“Oh, well, aye,” Glóin said, and shifted uncomfortably.  “Meant no insult to you, lad, or yours.”  This with a nod at Dori and Nori, and then to Bombur too.  “You’re his betters, no question of that.”  

“Bella?” Ori asked.  “Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Noble,” he asked, sidestepping Dori’s attempt to stamp on his foot.

“Hobbits don’t really have nobility,” Bella said.  “My family’s.  Well.”  It would be terribly bad manners to speak of money, though she had it.  “I’m the granddaughter of the Thain, if that counts for anything.”  

“Is that the hobbit king?” Bombur asked.    

“Oh, no, no, nothing like that,” Bella said.  “We don’t have kings.  The Thain is just who we choose to be in charge.”

“How’s that not like a king?” Nori asked, skeptical.  “‘Cept the choosing part.”

“That’s a rather important part,” Bella argued.

“Bet who gets chosen isn’t so hard to guess,” Nori countered.  “Couple of families, passing it around from one generation to the next, hrmm?”

“Er.  Well.”  Bella was taken aback.  “Yes, actually.  But there’s still a vote.”

He nodded; Ori looked fascinated.  She glanced at Thorin, but all his attention was on the road - where all of theirs should have been, she thought.

“Thought so,” Nori said.  “That’s how it works with smugglers and thieves - not the voting, that’s more usually a poisoning or a stabbing, but still, they fight it out.  Vote just makes it polite.”

Bella blinked, Dori looked completely mortified, and Nori raised a brow as if daring her to find fault with the comparison.  

“Guilds,” Glóin put in hastily.  “That’s how a guild works.”

Nori shrugged.  “Wouldn’t know.”

“Quiet,” Thorin said.  “They approach.”

Fíli ran ahead of the caravan, and Thorin went to meet him, Bella following.  

The two dwarves stopped a pace apart.

“Uncle,” Fíli said.  

“Fíli,” Thorin answered.  “You are well?”

“I am.”

Silence stretched for a handful of heartbeats, both seeming at a loss.  

Then Thorin closed the distance between them, took hold of Fíli’s shoulders, and brought their foreheads together.  “I am glad,” he said raggedly.  

Fíli pulled away, his expression wary and conflicted.  “I must speak quickly.”  He glanced over his shoulder; the Laketown envoy were no more than two dozen paces behind, and the Master was watching them with narrowed eyes.  “One of the elven guards is with us.”

“What?” Thorin drew back, stiffening, his expression turning murderous.  “They dare -”

“No,” Fíli said hurriedly.  “Listen!  She didn’t come here to try to recapture us, she -”

“She,” Thorin interrupted, and sounded no calmer.  “The one called Tauriel?”

“Yes.”

“The one who had your brother so bewitched.”

“The one who saved my brother’s life,” Fíli countered sharply.

“Do not think she did so out of her own goodness or honor,” Thorin said, his voice full of scorn and heedless of the anger growing in Fíli’s face.  “The elves of Mirkwood have none.  I do not know what game she plays - nay, what game her king plays -”

“Her king?” Fíli snapped.  “That would be _you_ , or will be soon enough.  She’s forsaken all ties to Thranduil - left his service to come to our aid.  To hunt down the orcs, who found us, by the way, and would likely have slaughtered us all, if it hadn’t been for her and -”  He paused, struggling for a moment.  “Her, uh, companion.  She wasn’t alone, but that one went on after the orcs.  She stayed, and that would be when she saved Kíli’s life _again_.  That arrow he took to the leg?  The tip was morgul steel.”

Bella gasped; Thorin blanched.  

“No,” he said.  “That is not possible.”

“It happened, so it must be,” Fíli countered.  “So she did work magic on him - she drew the poison from the wound.  But there is no sorcery in his devotion to her, or in hers to him.”

“Devotion?” Thorin repeated, sounding as though he were choking on the word.  He stared down the road toward Kíli, who must have felt eyes on him, and looked up.  Kíli’s expression went instantly hard and defiant.  He said something to the cloaked figure at his side - not Bard’s daughter, obviously, and Bella felt quite foolish for the assumption.   Tauriel pushed back her hood and took Kíli’s hand.  She looked even paler than Bella remembered, and her eyes were very, very wide as she nodded her head to Thorin.  

He did not return the gesture.

“He’s promised her a gift,” Fíli said.  “A set of knives, to be forged in Erebor.”

“And does she know what such a gift means?” Thorin demanded.

“Yes,” Fíli answered.  “I made sure she did.”

“She has my gratitude for his life,” Thorin said, lowering his voice - the caravan was very close now.  “But you are young, and trust too easily.  I do not doubt that Kíli is infatuated - you know well that it is a easy enough thing to catch his eye, and he can be very foolish for it.  But an elf, so quickly devoted?  How many centuries old is she, this creature who plays at maidenhood?”

“Six,” Fíli snapped.  “We talked about that, too.  As for maidenhood - don’t speak that way of her in front of Kíli.  I wouldn’t want him to re-injure his leg.  And there’s another thing you should know.”

“What more?” Thorin growled.  “Is that not enough?”

“She killed the dragon.”

^*^*^*^

What followed was the most awkward gathering Bella had ever had the misfortune to attend.  It was worse than Rivendell.  It was worse than _anything_.  

Thorin managed to praise Tauriel’s great deed in what Bella could only assume were acceptable terms, given that neither Kíli nor Fíli snatched her away like a favored toy and left, though both looked as if they wished they could.  Thorin looked as if every word was being pulled from his throat with a fish hook.  Tauriel herself just looked a bit like a startled deer.

Then Fíli introduced Bard, which would have been completely unnecessary given everyone there already knew him, had he not intended to present him as, ‘Bard, heir to the lordship of Dale.’  This, of course, made precisely no one happy, especially Bard, though he didn’t try to deny it.  The Master began sputtering about archaic claims to ruins, and went on in that vein until even Alfrid was looking embarrassed, before he remembered to whom he was speaking.  

“What I mean to say - as I am sure your Majesty understands,” the Master persisted, “Is that leadership requires practical experience.  Wisdom, refinement.  You can’t have just anyone declaring himself a king!”

“Indeed,” said Thorin.

A wise man might have held his tongue, at that point; the Master was nothing like a wise man, and floundered on obliviously in the apparent belief that he could still bend the situation to his favor if only he applied just a little more pomposity and bluster.

Tauriel’s expression had ventured past ‘startled deer’ and was approaching ‘frightened rabbit.’  Bella wondered if the elf believed she could actually disappear if only she stood still enough.

Fíli, on the other hand, was looking quite pleased with himself.  

It was, she supposed, good that he clearly had some skill with statecraft - it would be a good deal better if he weren’t using it to spite his uncle, and damn the consequences, as he quite obviously was.  

Eventually the Master’s attempts to unsay everything he’d previously said (without admitting any fault) tapered to a blundering halt.  

“Well,” Bella said, into the ensuing silence.  “Look at all the food you’ve brought us - enough for a truly splendid feast, I’m most impressed, and this late in the year, too.  Is that a whole hog?”

***

The amount of food the Master had brought was, given what Bella had seen of Laketown, bordering on obscene.  While the dwarves had given some thought to how food was to be cooked (an outdoor, stone oven had been constructed, and tinder and coals gathered) and served (tables and chairs dragged into the entrance hall), no one had imagined that there’d be a need to roast a whole, absurdly huge, boar.  The meal was, therefore, somewhat delayed.

This was made all the worse by the fact that not only did the Master and Alfrid refuse to lift a hand to help, but their guards stood by as well.  And if the Master and his fighting men were above such work, then dwarven warriors must be too, to say nothing of royalty or nobility - which happened to account for all of them.  To act otherwise, Thorin told her in a whisper, would be cede authority and privilege to ‘that wretched leech of a man.’  Bard would have assisted, had Fíli not pulled him aside and spent some moments speaking to him in a low tone.  Whatever he said made Bard scowl, but he ceased trying to join the Master’s overwhelmed servants in preparing the food.  

It was, in short, by Shire standards, a mortifying disaster.   

Some long, empty-bellied measure of time into this mess, Bofur found his way to Bella’s  side and pulled her into an engulfing, rib-crushing hug.

“Was worried for you, lass,” he said.  “Saw that dragon coming, and we feared the worst.”

“You feared?” Bella retorted, with a laugh that was more than a bit tearful.  “For a bit there, I thought I’d killed you!”

“Nah,” he answered, with a shrug and a grin.  “You left all the luckier folk behind, was your problem.  Well, Bombur’s lucky enough, I suppose,” he allowed.  “Still -” he nodded at where Kíli and Tauriel sat, the elf looking vaguely as if she expected someone to leap up and stab her - which may not have been an entirely unreasonable fear.

“That?” Bofur said.  “What’re the odds of _that?_ ”

“Better than the odds of it ending well,” Bella said with a grimace.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Bofur said.  “She’s not so bad, really, and I’ve never seen two people more head over teakettle.  Thorin’ll come around.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” she answered.  “Though I suppose it can’t have hurt that she killed the dragon.”

He snorted.  “If that don’t do it . . .”

“Yes,” Bella agreed.

“Ought to have Óin take a peek at those ears of yours,” he said.

“They hardly even hurt anymore,” Bella answered.  “If they were going to fester, I think they would have done it by now.”

“Eh, you’re probably right.”  He paused.  “Bombur landed wrong on one of his knees, says it don’t bend like it ought now.”

“What?” Bella exclaimed.  “He never said!”

“No, he wouldn’t,” Bofur said.  “Óin thinks one of his feet’s broken, too.  The heel, and . . .  some other bone, seems feet have a lot of them.”

“But he - he’s been walking around like nothing was wrong!” Bella protested.  “He helped with the door and -  and he and Bifur went off to look for your old house!  On their own!”

“Wouldn’t have let him do that if he’d told you he was a wreck from the knees down, would you?”

“Oh,” Bella said.

“Don’t think he hasn’t had a piece of my mind about it,” Bofur said.  “Though, don’t tell him, but I’d have done the same.  We’ve been hearing about this place our whole lives.”

“He said.”

Bofur was quiet a moment.  Then, “Said you were down in the mines, though probably best we’re not talking about why, just now.”  He nodded in the general direction of their guests.

“Just briefly,” Bella told him.  “And one that had been shut down before the dragon came.”

“Always wondered what they’d be like,” Bofur said.  “The mines of Erebor.  Mines our Da worked.  Bombur says they’re pretty much big holes in the ground, like mines anywhere.  But then, his legs were hurting him quite a bit, at the time.  May not have given him the best impression.”

Bella winced at the memory of how Bombur had struggled with the scaffolding.

“We’re not miners, neither of us,” Bofur said, in a voice that made Bella give his face a closer look.  “Ma was disappointed - tried to hide it, you know, but she was.  We were what she had left of Da, and there weren’t much of him in us.  Miners both, she and Da, and the two of us without the stone sense to tell which way’s up in the dark.”

“Is she still living?” Bella asked.

“Passed on two summers ago,” he answered.  “Probably why we came, truth be told.  Eh, no, not Bombur, not exactly - but in a way.  His girl, the oldest, she’s got it, whatever Ma and Da had.  That feel for stone.”  Then he turned and gave Bella a smile.  “But what am I yammering on about?  How’s it being Queen under the Mountain, hrmm?”

“Complicated,” Bella answered, without thought and with great feeling.  “You are always welcome to yammer at me.  Please do.”

 

^*^*^*^

“That boar,” Bard said to Thorin, nodding slightly toward where the beast in question was being turned on a spit.  “The one the Master slaughtered for your feast?”

“Yes,” Thorin said, tearing his eyes away from where his nephew sat holding hands with that accursed elf.  “What of it?”

“If you find that your pork tastes of fish,” Bard answered, “that would be because it drowned.  Some time before we’d had any word of you.”

Thorin looked up at Bard, and Bard looked back at Thorin, weighing and measuring and considering.

Thorin snorted.  “Why does that not surprise me?”  He relaxed, and his eyes drifted back out across the room to the Master; the man had claimed pride of place near the fire, where he sat red-faced and sweating in his furs and velvet.

“Very little should,” Bard told him, “where that one is concerned.”

Thorin glanced back at him, but now Bard’s eyes were elsewhere.  

“We did not part on good terms, you and I,” Thorin said.  

“No, we did not,” Bard acknowledged, without the slightest hint of apology for it.

“And yet you give me counsel,” Thorin said.

“Do you doubt the counsel I give?”

“I find it difficult to believe that you harbor no ill will,” Thorin answered.  

“I needn’t forgive you to see that our fortunes are tied to yours,” Bard said.  “And I don’t.”

Thorin’s jaw clenched and his hands balled into fists, but it was only for a moment before he nodded acknowledgement.  The man had cause to speak as he did.

“I cannot regret what we have done,” Thorin said, “not when we have reclaimed our home.  But even so, I am sorry for your people’s suffering, and will do what I can to make it right.”

“Lives were lost,” Bard said.  “You cannot make that right.”

“The gold we will give you and the trade we will bring you cannot return your dead to life,” Thorin said, “but it will make your winters easier.  How many did you lose, each year, when the lake froze?  How many babes born who never breathed, because their mothers had too little to eat?  How many children and old men found frozen in their beds?”

“What can you know of it?” Bard retorted angrily.

“That is how we, too, lived,” Thorin said, “those who did live, after the mountain fell.  We know suffering; do not think we have no pity for yours.”

“Your pity is too late for this winter,” Bard said, “which will be harder for our losses.”

“The mountain can give you shelter,” Thorin said.

“And the lake can give you fish, and what little we could grow along its shores,” Bard countered.  “You cannot eat gold.  Fourteen mouths to feed may seem few to you -”

“I know well that it is not,” Thorin said.  “But we also bring you fourteen pairs of skilled hands.”

“Dwarves are no fishermen.”

“One of our number is a healer.  Any of us can fashion tools and weapons better than those you have now.  We offer you a roof and a hearth, and to earn our meals besides.”

“Generous as that may be,” Bard answered, “it’s poor payment for what you have taken from an orphaned child.”

“I do not claim otherwise,” Thorin said, “But would lives not have been lost when next the dragon woke?  Both our peoples had hoped he lay dead and rotting here, but he did not, and would have woken in time whether we had come or not.  He would have fed on your livestock and your people and burned your town for sport, as he had done for generations of men, and would have done for centuries more.  And all the while you would have lived in fear and always on the brink of starvation in a land made bare and barren.”  

“True words,” Bard acknowledged, “but it was not you who slew the dragon.”  And the look Bard gave him was one of open challenge.  “Have a care how you treat the one who did; so will the men of the lake know the true value you place on our lives.”

^*^*^*^

It was well past midnight by the time they finally ate.  The Master had been complaining, loudly and for some time, of feeling increasingly faint - as if it were not his own fault that they’d had to wait so long.  

Then again, Bella wasn’t entirely sure he understood that it was.  And if he didn’t, then she and Bombur and Bard might as well have gotten on with it hours ago, but if she thought on that too long she was likely to throw up her hands at all of it and just march off to bed.  

And after all that, the pork was oddly bland and watery.  

“My lady,” Thorin said, to Tauriel - who sat at his right, as the dragonslayer and the guest of honor (to her other side was the Master, looking offended and put out).  “I know naught of you but your given name, as my nephew has failed to introduce you properly.  Tell me of your family.”  His tone was not as light as Bella suspected he thought it was.

“I have none,” Tauriel answered, sitting straight and stiff as a fencepost.    

“None,” Thorin repeated, and what restraint there had been in his voice or face was slipping away.  “None?  Surely some man sired you and some woman bore you.”

Kíli looked up sharply, glaring at his uncle.  He was seated in his proper place as second in line to the throne, to the left of Fíli, who was to the left of Bella, who sat to Thorin’s other side.  

“Yes, of course, my lord,” Tauriel answered, “but I did not know them.”

“You do not know your father's name?” Thorin asked, and Bella kicked his shin under the table.  He reacted not at all.

“Wouldn’t you rather hear of her deeds in battle?” Kíli said.  “A _dragonslayer_ must have many fine tales to tell.”

“Yes,” Bella agreed.  “Let’s.”  

Bard was minding this exchange quite closely, his countenance grim.  

“Should we not know who it is who sits at our table?” Thorin answered Kíli, returning his hard look in full.  “Among _the line of Durin?_ ”

“One who has earned her place here,” Kíli snapped.

“Indeed she has,” Bard agreed, and there was something of a threat in his voice.  

“She has,” Thorin acknowledged in a growl, “And if we are to record her tale in our histories and accord her the honor she has earned, we must know how to name her.  Tauriel, daughter of who?”

“Surely that’s a matter for the scribes?” Bella interjected.  “Do we need to bother with the details at dinner?”

“No, no,” said the Master, who seemed to be enjoying this very much, “Now I am intrigued.”

“Tauriel, daughter of the wood,” said Tauriel, looking a great deal like parchment herself.  

“But I am told you are no longer of the Woodland Realm,” Thorin answered.  “Is that not so?”

“It is so,” Tauriel replied, “and, forgive me, my lord, but you misunderstand - that is not what that means.”

“Then what does it mean?” Thorin demanded.

“Isn’t it fascinating, how a phrase can mean one thing to one people and something else entirely to another?” Bella said.  “I’d be very interested in this matter - this matter _to do with elves_ \- at a later time, when it can be discussed at more length.”  

Thorin set his glare on her, but she refused to be intimidated by it, raising her chin and one brow.  She wasn’t entirely sure he’d been serious, when he’d said she would be entrusted with all dealings with elves, but if this mess was anything to judge by - well, if he hadn’t been, he should have been.  

“A son or daughter of the wood,” Tauriel replied, “is a foundling; a child abandoned or orphaned, whose lineage cannot be discovered.”

Bella grabbed Thorin’s right hand, which had curled into a fist around his cutlery.

“Which means,” Bard said, his eyes on Thorin despite that he spoke of Tauriel, “that everything you have, every skill and title, you’ve earned by your own wits and hard work.  I’d say that’s worthy of honor, wouldn’t you?  My king?”

Thorin’s hand, beneath Bella’s, was shaking - but he answered, in a voice near as low and dark as the dragon’s had been, “It is.”

Bard nodded, and Thorin nodded back, and both looked like they’d much rather be trading blows.

“Who’s for a tune?” Bofur called out, from down the table.  “It’s too grim in here; is this a victory feast or not?”

^*^*^*^

“This is no more than a youthful folly,” Thorin said; they stood alone in a corridor a few turns down from where their guests were finally ensconced for the night.  “One he will regret bitterly in twenty years time, when he will have long forgotten why he wished to defy me - but he will be wed, and among our people, that is a thing that cannot be undone.”

There was a note of despair in his voice that brought Bella up short.  

“You’re going to allow it,” she realized aloud, surprised.

“How can I not?  She slew the damned dragon!” He threw his hands up.  “Before it could burn Laketown, who are already friends of the elves.  She is their hero, their savior.  Reject her, and as easily as that, we could make enemies of the men who control the lake and the river - who control our trade.  That has been made very clear to me.  Barren as the land now is, they could starve us if they so chose.  My nephew was shrewd in how he’s done this, I must credit him for that.  There is nothing I can do.”  

“You could try not to hate her when she’s done nothing wrong, and a great deal right,” Bella pointed out, “You could do that.”  

“No,” Thorin said, “No, I could not.  Perhaps if he had chosen a daughter of Imladris, some maiden of Lorien, but not this creature of the Woodland Realm, the very people who betrayed us.”

“She’s not, thought,” Bella said.  “Of the Woodland Realm.  She just told you that.”

He snorted.  “No one changes so much in a handful of days.  An elf least of all.”

“You do realize, allowing this marriage, it’s an insult to Thranduil,” Bella ventured.  “Insult may be too mild a word.  His captain of the guard deserts him, and you marry your nephew to her?”

He turned and glared.  “Do you think me such a fool,” Thorin said, sounding incredulous and hurt and angry all at once, “that I would I would choose my nephew’s bride for such a reason?  That I care so little for the good his marriage could bring our people, or for his happiness?”

“I said no such thing,” Bella retorted, feeling stung herself, that he could think that she could think that he wouldn’t think . . . her head was starting to throb.  “I only thought -”

“That I could be so easily brought to heel?”

And what little patience or forbearance she had left evaporated

“That if you’re going to act like a sullen, spiteful child, then an appeal to childish spite might be just the thing to bring you around!” Bella snapped.  “And don’t you dare try to tell me that is unfair!”

“You think I speak from so petty a motive as spite?  Does this seem so simple, to you?  You do not understand -”

“Well, there goes my wisdom exceeding your own!” Bella shouted.  “And here I was worried it’d take you years to trust yourself again.  That was quick!”

He flinched as if she’d struck him.  In the part of her that wasn’t so very, very done with all of this that there were no words that could adequately express it, she was sorry - but most of her was just utterly exasperated, and so abruptly furious that she could hardly think.  

“I had been thankful,” he growled, “that you seemed not to hold that against me.”

“And I had been thankful that you seemed to have regained your senses!” Bella retorted, though she hated the words the moment they left her lips.  

He made no retort, and Bella thought his silence more biting than any words could have been.

Her shoulders sagged; what were they doing?  She was just _so_ tired, so completely used up.  Why couldn’t he just  . . . just . . . she didn’t even know.

“I don’t know a damned thing about alliances and the politics of noble marriages and I never once claimed that I did,” she said, in a more moderate tone, “but I thought you were done with acting like this - like the whole world is against you.  Us.”

“The whole world has been against us,” Thorin said - and he, too, was clearly struggling to speak calmly.  “I say this not in accusation - but truly, that is a thing you do not and cannot understand.  Remembering it has saved my people more than once.”

“But now it could hurt them,” Bella said.  “It could - it _is_ hurting Kíli.”

“That is what angers you,” Thorin observed, clearly just realizing it.  “Not my distrust of elves, but that you believing I am being cruel to him.”

“You _are_ being cruel to him,” Bella answered, “even if you don’t mean to be.  And you are being cruel to that girl -”

“That _girl_ is more than twice as old as Balin.”

“ _That girl_ , for by elfish standards that is what she is, _killed the damned dragon_ , for pity’s sake,” Bella said.  “I’m going to lose count of the number of times she’s saved Kíli’s life, soon, and she holds Thranduil in exactly the same regard that you do.  You’d -”  But she stopped herself, because however true the worlds in her mind might be, however needful, she feared they might be unforgivable.

And he was right; she could not understand.  It made her view of things clearer, she thought, but it would do no one any good to point that out.

“I would what?”

Bella hesitated.

“Do not hold your tongue now,” Thorin said.  

“There are things you have in common,” Bella said, the words falling from her lips on a weary sigh, “if you would let yourself see that.  Think of the Greenwood, Thorin, and what she’s had to watch it become.  Is that so different from a dragon?”

“That is how you see it?” he asked, and she could not read his face or his voice at all.

“Yes,” Bella said, “It is.”

“That she has done what I, in my youth, could not,” Thorin said.

“What?  No!” Bella exclaimed.  “You tried to reason with your grandfather, you argued for better defenses - and when that failed, you lead your people to safety, built them a new home, and then turned around and reclaimed the first one!  From a dragon!”

“Which she slew.”

“Which she slew,” Bella allowed.  “But no, she has not done for her people what you’ve done for yours.  She hasn’t even tried, not yet, at least.  All she did is leave - but she did leave, Thorin, and come to our aid.  One elf came to our aid, this one.  Surely that’s worth something?”

“Something, perhaps,” Thorin conceded.  “But not my nephew.  Not my widowed sister’s youngest son.  Let her have the gems Thranduil believes he is owed, let her have half the gold in the mountain, but she asks too much.  Such a union - could she even give him children?  He will not have thought of that, he is too short-sighted, too reckless -”

“You might ask him,” Bella said, “if he’s thought of that.  And she wants to marry him, Thorin, not eat him for dinner - there’s no need to act as if you’re offering him up like a sacrifice.  You’ve already said you’ll allow it, that you must allow it, so for pity’s sake, Thorin, why are we still arguing?”

“You think me so blinded by old hatreds that I am beyond reason,” Thorin said.  “I would not have my future wife see me thus.”

“Your common, foreign future wife, who is a thoughtless fool,” Bella answered.

He turned away and put a hand to his brow as if his head, too, pained him.  “I do not think you a fool.”

“And I don’t think you’re beyond reason,” Bella said.  “If I did, I wouldn’t be wasting my time trying to get you to see it.”

“But you would hold out the promise of an insult to Thranduil like a carrot on a stick to lead me along.”

“You know I didn’t mean it that way.  I thought you might laugh - that it might bring you out of your temper.  Of course you wouldn’t actually -”

“I did,” Thorin said.

“What?”

“I did,” Thorin repeated, turning back to her.  “When we were captives; Thranduil offered our freedom and his aid, if I would pay him in the jewels he has long desired, once we reclaimed the mountain.”

Bella blinked at him; she’d caught only the latter part of his conversation with Thranduil, which had mostly involved threats and curses, not offers of aid.  

“And I refused him.”

That was one way to put it.  

“Well,” she said; then, very carefully, “I am not saying you should have trusted him - I wouldn’t trust him as far as a stone can swim - but -”

“But I might have taken the offer of freedom, without believing that the promised aid would ever come.”

“Well, yes,” Bella said.  “Would have saved us a lot of trouble.”  

“And Kíli an arrow in his leg.”

“No -”

“Yes,” Thorin insisted harshly.  “I will not repeat my mistakes.  I will swallow my pride and I will permit this marriage.  I will give them a grand feast.  I will offer my blessing, and give him jewels for his bride, but Bella, do not ask me not to hate it.  Do not ask me not to rage and mourn.”

“I would ask you,” Bella said, “not to rage _at me_.”

“I have not,” he said.

“Oh, no?  We were having a nice chat over tea, then, were we?”

“I was not angry with _you_ ,” Thorin clarified, “Until you spoke of Thranduil.  And even so, I have not raised my voice to you, and I will not.”   _Though you were just shouting at me_ , went unsaid.

“Fine, then,” Bella said.  “Don’t shout at Kíli, either.  Or Tauriel.  Not about their courtship, at least.  If they give you other reasons to shout, which they probably will - fair reasons that don’t amount to ‘being an elf’ - then I won’t say a word about it.”  

“I have _said_ that I will -”

“In private as well as public.  Allow it or don’t; don’t make them miserable for it.”

“They will know it for a lie,” Thorin said, “if I pretend joy.  But for your sake and his, I will endeavor to curb my tongue.”

“Thank you,” Bella said, drew in a breath, and added, “I should not have said what I did about you . . .  trusting yourself, thinking I’m the wiser of us.  I shouldn’t have . . . just, I shouldn’t have.”

“In that, you have every right,” Thorin said, and sighed.

Bella opened her mouth to protest, shut it again, tried to make sense of all the tangled things she felt, and finally said, “Perhaps, but I don’t see what good it does.  That’s not how I want things between us.  If it happened again - well, it won’t, unless you have another Arkenstone lying around.”

“Even if I did,” Thorin said, “It would not.”

“I’m not going to hold that over your head every time we fight,” Bella said.  “I’m not.”

He nodded, and there was a long, tense moment in which neither spoke.

“You’re still upset with me, aren’t you?” Bella finally said.

“As you are with me,” Thorin answered.

“I’m going outside,” Bella told him.  “It may be cold and dark and barren out there, but I am tired, I am so very tired, and I need dirt under my feet if I’m to put my thoughts in order.  I need some time to just - just be a hobbit.”

“As it please you.”

“I’ll see you in the morning, then,” Bella said, and went.


	20. Grim Tidings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER SPECIFIC WARNINGS: Semi-graphic depictions of injury / the aftermath of torture. BotFA glossed over a lot; I'm not doing that.

^*^*^*^

Cold was not the word for what it was outside the mountain, with the cookfires extinguished, the winds sharp, and the light creeping on toward morning.  The sky was still black, but not the deep, velvet black of night in the hours soon after the sun has gone down.  This was a witching-hour sky, and Bella thought she had seen far too many of them in the last few days.  

There were two of the Master’s guard leaning against the gate outside, looking more asleep than not; only one of them stirred as she climbed over the half-door ( as it was certainly not worth the trouble of opening it for one small hobbit.)

(It likely would be for a queen; queens, after all, do not climb their own doors to save people the trouble.  If she thought too hard on that, though, she was afraid she might just start weeping at the sheer enormity of it all.)  

Nori was seated on a boulder overlooking the valley, sharpening his knives by only the thin light of the moon.  He nodded to her, and she nodded back; his position was a good one to spy approaching enemies, but it didn’t require turning his back on the Master’s men, either.  Bella suspected it was chosen more for the latter reason than the former; there had been no sign of the orcs since Laketown, where their numbers had been thinned considerably.

The remains of the hog were still hanging on the spit, and good bit of meat was left on it; it was cold enough that there was no need to worry about it spoiling.  The offal was gathered into several gilt bowls, one for the entrails, one for the kidneys and liver, another for the heart, and the lungs had been spread out like wings on a platter.  Next to that sat half a gooseberry pie; that had been Bella’s idea, though the Master’s serving-woman had looked quite offended at it.

But she hadn’t said a word, though - of course she hadn’t.  If a queen wants a pie left out on her doorstep, then on her doorstep a pie will be left.  

All that was for the ravens, of course, who were likely to stir much earlier than any of the Company or their guests would wake, after such a late night.  They, too, had been promised a feast.  

Bella tip-toed carefully around the plates and bowls to steal a small piece of meat off the side of the carcass.  It was near frozen and just as disappointing as she remembered it - but if she woke in the middle of the night, she got up and had a little something and sat by the fire and read until she fell back asleep in her chair.  That was what she did.  That was comforting and ordinary and who she had always believed herself to be, and if she could have none of the rest of it, well, she could have a bite to eat.  

A really _very_ disappointing bite to eat.

Verging on repulsive.  

Bella cast a sidelong glance at the pie - but no, no, that was for the ravens.  Dirt under her feet; she’d told Thorin she needed dirt under her feet.  She walked over to where Nori sat, and past him.

“Wouldn’t wander too far,” he said.  

“It’s not as though I could get lost,” she retorted irritably, throwing a hand out to indicate the wide open expanse before them.  

One of the Master’s guardsmen started snoring.

“You’d be surprised,” Nori returned, but went on sharpening his knives.

Bella took a few more steps, just to say that she could, but not very far; the earth was so hard it might as well have been stone, and the dry remnants of grass were unpleasant between her toes and against her ankles.  The wind was a continuous, low roar, like the rushing of a great river; for a moment Bella could picture it, that the air was water, and she stood at the bottom of a riverbed, and up there - beyond the stray wisps of cloud - there was a different, quieter, less tumultuous world.  

But there wasn’t, and even her feet were getting cold.  She would have turned and gone back inside then, if Nori hadn’t drawn in a hissing breath.  Bella turned, and saw him scrambling to his feet, staring hard into the distance.

“What?  What is it?” she asked.

“Not sure yet,” he responded, “But big.  Very big.  Can you see it?”  

“I don’t see anything,” Bella answered, looking out over the valley, straining her eyes to see as far as she could into the dark - but there was nothing, not even the hint of movement in the shadows.  “Where?”

“Look up.”

She did, her stomach swooping; how quickly could word of Smaug’s demise have traveled?  Quickly enough for another dragon to have come?  At first she saw only darkened sky - but then -

“It’s not,” Nori said, as if he’d read her thoughts.  “Wrong shape, no neck to speak of.”  He exhaled, relieved.  “Looks like a bird.”

“An eagle,” Bella realized - one of the great eagles, and descending fast, straight for the gates of Erebor.  

Eagles did not fly at night.  Something was yet very wrong.  

“And with somebody on its back,” Nori said.  

^*^*^*^

The elf woman who climbed down off the eagle was easily the most beautiful being Bella had ever seen, luminous in the dark, but she held Bella’s attention for less than the span of a breath.  There was not one person on the eagle’s back, but two.

The other figure looked, at first, like nothing more than a pile of rags and uncarded wool.  Then its head lolled, as the elf reached up to pull it oh so gently from the eagle’s back, aided by a careful rolling of the bird’s wing and shoulder.  

She caught its head on her shoulder, and it ceased to be an it, and all the breath left Bella’s lungs and the cold around her vanished.  “Gandalf!” she cried out, and ran to them.  

He looked dead.

He couldn’t be dead.  How could he be dead?  He _couldn’t -_

He moaned, and his eyes opened; feeling rushed back into her limbs.  

“Thorin!” said Gandalf, his eyes casting wildly about and seeing nothing.  “I must -”  He tried to stand, and cried out and collapsed back against the elf.

“Going!” Nori said, and ran.  He was up over the door and into the mountain in the length of time it took the Master’s men to finally stir themselves to action.

“Hey now!” said the one, stepping away from the wall and putting a hand to the hilt of his sword.  “Who goes there?”

“Stand aside!” said the elf, and they did, though they had little choice in the matter; she flung out one hand, the one not slung beneath Gandalf’s arms and cradling him to her chest, and the doors opened.  Their hinges screamed, and Bella felt every hair on her body stand on end.  Something brushed past her like a wind, like ripples on a pond, from the power it had taken to fling the stone gates wide as if they weighed no more than her pantry door back home.  

“His feet,” said the elf, and it took Bella far longer than it should have to realize she was being addressed and, after that, what it was that the woman wanted.  “Help me.”

“Oh, of course!” Bella said, and hurried over.

Gandalf did not flinch when she lifted his feet from the ground, though they were bare and cut and burned, half the toenails gone.  There were dried trails of blood down his ankles and black-stained tears in his robes.  Bella thought she might be sick; she had seen injury before, men trampled by horses and gored by bulls, sheep that the wolves had gotten, but not like this, nothing like this.  This was cruelty and hate written on every exposed inch of his skin, and she did not want to think about what she could not see.  

“What happened?” Bella asked, trying not to trip over her own feet as she hurried to keep pace with the elf.

“I forgot that wizards are still men,” she answered, “and foolish in their pride.”

“What?”

“He met an enemy,” the elf clarified.  “Here, lay him down.”  And they laid him down on the table in the entrance hall, where bare hours ago they had been feasting.  “One whose power he knew might yet exceed his own, and he did not wait for aid, nor tell me of his plan.  It was days before I knew.”

Then she began to tear his robes away; Bella didn’t know if she should avert her eyes or not, if that would be respect or cowardice.  It didn’t matter, really, because she simply couldn’t.

“He shouldn’t be here,” Bella said.  “He should be somewhere that there are healers - many healers, good ones, and an apothecary and clean instruments and baths and -”

“He would not allow it, until he had spoken to Thorin Oakenshield,” the elf said.  “Have you nothing here?  None who might aid me?”

“I don’t think he could have stopped you!” Bella protested, gesturing at where Gandalf lay, unconconscious.  Not dead.  No matter how he looked it, not dead.  

“There are some forms of healing that must be accepted, and he was too lost in fear to allow it.  He is wounded in ways you cannot see, and yet still strong in others, too strong for his own good - where is your king?  Where is Thorin Oakenshield?”  

“Here!” came Thorin’s voice, from down the hall.  The others were behind him.  “What in Durin’s name is this?”  Then, two steps closer, he barked out, “Óin!  You are needed!”  

“Eh?  What’s that?” Óin said, but Bella could hear a set of footsteps quicken.

“Who did this?” Thorin demanded, glaring at the elf as if he suspected the wizard’s wounds to be her own work.

“For pity’s sake!” Bella snapped.  “That hardly matters now, does it?”

The elf did not answer him, but bent low over Gandalf’s head, murmuring, one hand on his brow.  His eyes opened and he gasped, and might have flailed right off the table had she not caught him.  She held him half-upright with one arm, and with her other hand she gently turned his head.  

“Thorin!” Gandalf exclaimed, and tried to reach for him, though his arms shook.  

“I am here, my friend,” Thorin said, and caught on his hand.  “Who has done this to you?”

“You must - you must not - where are we?” Gandalf rasped, his eyes wandering away from Thorin’s face to search the room.  “Where -”

“Erebor,” Thorin answered, with pride dimmed by worry.  “We have succeeded, the mountain is -”

“No!” Gandalf exclaimed, jerking as though he had been struck.  “No, no, they are coming!”

“Who is coming?”

“They -”  but his words faded, the blood draining from his face and his eyes drooping.

The elf whispered rapidly in his ear, and Bella again felt that sensation like a cool wind; power, and quite a lot of it.

“Speak what you must,” the elf said, and her voice had gone deep and strange.

Gandalf came back to himself, though he shook, and his eyes couldn’t seem to focus.  

“Who is coming?” Thorin asked.

“Legions,” Gandalf said.  “Azog - an army marches from Dol Guldur!  I must warn - Thorin?  Where are we?” he asked again.

“Safe,” said Thorin, and though Bella would not have said before that he and Gandalf were any more than tolerant of one another, and sometimes not even that, there was some measure of tenderness in that one word.  “You are safe, and we are warned.  You have done well, and must allow yourself to be healed now.”

“Thorin?”

“Yes,” Thorin said.  “You have reached me, and warned me.  I know the Defiler is coming, and an army of his filth with him.  We will be ready.  Let go now, your task is done.”

“Your father loved you, Thorin,” said Gandalf, and then went limp.

^*^*^*^

All was quickly chaos; Óin was shouting for boiling water and bandanges, salt and strong spirits.  Tauriel appeared and, upon seeing the elf who had brought Gandalf, gaped like a fish before falling to one knee.  It was then that Bella learned who this was; the lady Galadriel of Lórien.  One of the fierce and glorious figures of her favorite tales was right in front of her, with blood and dirt smearing her white gown and deep circles under her eyes.  

The men of the Lake went back to the Lake, with much furious imprecation from the Master about this second doom that the dwarves had brought upon them.  Bard said nothing, but his silence was more condemning than any threat or insult.  They would be back, with what stores they had and the whole of their people, to take refuge in the mountain.

Thorin and Balin and Dwalin gathered in council, speaking in low and dire tones; Fíli and Nori went out into the swiftly breaking dawn with bows to seek what game they could find, while a much-protesting Kíli was left behind.  The eagle, Gwaihir, flew in the other direction, but also on the hunt; he could go further, to less blighted land.  Ori and Dori were sent to the ruins of Dale to find the ravens, with a message for them to carry and the hope of all that old Roӓc might remember the way to the Iron Hills (If not, Gwaihir would go, but it seemed wiser to keep him nearer if they could.)  Troops marched from Lothlórien, even now, Galadriel said - she could speak to her husband there, mind to mind, even at such distance, and once she had done all she could for Gandalf, she had called for aid.  But they would be some days behind the orcs.

Someone must go to the Woodland Realm, she said, for their help but also to warn them, and then she and Thorin fell to shouting - or rather Thorin shouted, and told her she was not welcome there herself save that Gandalf needed her.  Galadriel barely raised her voice, though her voice again _changed_ , and the shadows around her deepened.  

The remainder of the company did their best to flee. Bifur, Bofur, and Gloin went in search of what arms and armour could be found that remained undamaged, and also for larger stores of the materials they would need to complete the reconstruction of the door.  Bombur would have gone with them, if not for a stern scolding from Bofur about minding his injured leg. Instead he remained to assist Óin in cleaning up the mess that treating Gandalf's wounds had made.

Likely Bella should have joined one of these efforts; she’d be no use in the weapons search, but she could wash bandages. Gather candles from nearby rooms and halls. Something.

Instead she found herself in a far corner, as far as she could be and still remain within sight of where Gandalf lay, insensible but clean now, covered to his chin with heavy blankets.  

At length Thorin and Galadriel’s arguing ceased - due, in large part, to Tauriel, who interrupted to ask if the Lady could not examine Kíli’s leg, for her skill in healing far exceeded Tauriel’s own.  (Kíli was insisting that he was perfectly fine and able, loudly and to anyone who might listen - which was no one.)  At this Thorin looked very much as if he’d like to start shouting at Tauriel, too, but then his eyes found Bella across the room, and his mouth shut, and he gave a terse nod.

It was decided that Gwaihir would go to Mirkwood, when he returned from the hunt, if he so desired - which was very little concession on Thorin’s part, seeing as he had neither the authority nor the means to command the eagle in anything, and owed he and his people a debt besides for their rescue some months past.  

Galadriel saw to a fiercely scowling Kíli, Thorin and Balin and Dwalin found chalk and began sketching out battle plans on the gilt floor, and Bella watched the steady rise and fall of Gandalf’s chest.  All else seemed like a dream.  Eventually, though she did not mean to, she slept.  

^*^*^*^

Bella woke to the sound or ravens, coarse voices and wings and the click of talons.  She blinked her eyes open, her head heavy and her mouth dry, to see one of them less than a pace away, watching her.  

She thought, by its size and the manner of its movement, that this might be Grӓc’s betrothed - definitely one of the ladies, anyway, small as she was.  She had something in her mouth.

“Hello,” said Bella.  “I’m glad you’ve come, you’ll be safer here.”

The raven came closer, cautious and ducking and weaving, and Bella saw that what she had in her mouth was a gooseberry, dripping syrup - which she dropped in Bella’s hand, before hopping quickly back away, dancing from foot to foot.

“Pie,” she said, or at least Bella thought she did, though it wasn’t very clear.  “Good.”  She ducked her head once, and then flew away to join her fellows, who were gathered around Balin and the sketched-out war plans on the floor.  Gandalf still slept on the table, though he had turned on his side, and someone had found him a pillow.  Galadriel sat on the floor with her back to one of the table’s legs, just in reach of where one of his hands dangled.  Her head leaned in to that hand and her eyes were closed, but though Bella could not have said why, she did not think she slept.  Of the rest of the dwarves, or Tauriel, there was no sign.  The light coming in through the gate was bright, well into morning.

Bella looked down at the berry in her hand, considered a moment, thought of ravens and the sorts of things they ate in the wild - and then decided she was hungry and that, all things considered, worrying about where a raven’s beak had been was more than a bit absurd.  She popped it in her mouth.

Grӓc’s lady would need name, if they were to be friends; Bella simply refused to think of her entirely in terms of belonging to some male.  

(Like a Hobbit queen of Dwarves, some part of her whispered, but she told it firmly to hush.)

There was an army of orcs marching toward them.

She tried to turn the idea this way and that in her head, and - nope, it still didn’t seem real.  

Footsteps came up the hall; Thorin’s steps, which she just then realized she had grown to recognize.  He held something that shone, spilling over his hands like cloth but gleaming like metal.  His eyes fell on her, and he strode toward her with great purpose in his steps.

Bella tottered to her feet, feeling like she needed about three more days of sleep, and hoping he was not still angry with her - though she had snapped at him again, over Gandalf’s sickbed, hadn’t she?  Not that she regretted that, exactly, as he’d very well deserved it.  She was not very good at this, really, this being half of a pair.  

“Bella,” he greeted.

“Thorin,” she answered, and had to stifle a yawn.

His lips turned up at that, just a little, but fondly.  “It’s not a very good start, is it, that I’ve yet to find you a bed.  The betrothed of a king, and sleeping on the floor by the door.”

“I’ve slept worse places,” Bella pointed out.

“Also on my account,” he said.

“Not all of them,” Bella replied, “I got lost in the woods once as a tween, slept under a log and woke up with a spider having made a web between the ground and my nose.”  She blinked blearily, trying to gather her wits together.  “Anyway, some queen-to-be I’ve been; I haven’t done a single useful thing since midnight, and we’re about to be at war.”

“He is dear to you,” Thorin said, looking over his shoulder to Gandalf.  “To see him thus; it was a shock.”

“He was a friend of my mother’s.  I’ve known him since - I don’t actually remember not knowing him, though I forgot him a bit in the intervening years,” Bella said.  “And he looked -”  She swallowed.  “I’m not much use at a sickbed.  Never was, but since - I get queasy, and afraid of doing more harm, and just - I just never know what to do.”

“I can clean and stitch a wound,” Thorin offered, “Or brew hot broth; beyond that, I’m little better.”

“Well then,” Bella said, and yawned again, and didn’t try to stop it this time.  Well then what, she wasn’t really sure.  

“This is for you.” Thorin held out the shining thing - a shirt of mail, it turned out to be, the rings so small and fine that it rippled like water.  The metal was nearly white - mithril, she realized.  There was some decoration at the neck, simple enough for fine armor, and more elaborate than any jewels she’d ever owned.

“I told you that I would be glad to have you at my side in battle,” Thorin said.  “I meant it, though I would also wish you far from it, and safe.  I do not think that you would hide in safety if I asked it, though.”

“No,” Bella said.  “No, I certainly would not.  I’d go mad, waiting in here with you out there, all of you, maybe dying, maybe needing my help.  And I have my ring - we can’t waste an advantage like that.”

“No,” Thorin agreed.  “We cannot.  But I would have you as safe as may be; I’ve yet to find you a suitable helm, or vambraces or a gorget, but it is a start.  This was my brother’s, when he was young.”

Bella took it with careful hands, almost afraid her fingers would smudge it, though that was too silly for words - it was meant to stop swords and arrows, to wade through mud and blood.  “So light,” she said.

“But strong,” Thorin said.  “Put it on; you’ll have a doublet to wear beneath it, but for now, I can at least judge if it will fit you properly.  It should not restrain your movement, but it cannot be too loose.”

Bella pulled it over her head; it slithered and chimed and seemed almost like a living thing, as if she were assuming a second skin.  Once it had been tugged and twisted into place, it fit surprisingly well, actually - it did not pull at the shoulders, and only a little across the chest, but it moulded to her form.  

“A little tight in the hips,” Bella said.

Thorin nodded.  “There is time enough to remedy that; I’m no master armourer, but I can make do.”  He was staring quite intently, and while Bella was sure it was to judge the fit of the thing for entirely practical reasons, she was also conscious of the fact that it fit her more snugly, and revealed more of her shape, than anything he had yet seen her wear.  Even sopping wet from the river, she’d had her heavy jacket, which revealed little.

(She herself had gotten an eyeful, not just of him but of all of them.)

And then Thorin looked away, and said in a very deliberately neutral voice, “You should bind your breasts.  Any tightness in the chest will hinder the reach of your arms, and your breathing.”

“Oh.  Yes, that - that would be wise, of course,” Bella answered, and felt her cheeks flaming.

He glanced back at her; there was a pinkness high on his cheeks too.  “I mean no disrespect in speaking so - my concern is only for -”

“Oh, stop,” Bella said, and laughed, though the sound was thin and a bit desperate.  “We’re to be married.  You may look at my breasts, what there is of them, which is apparently, by how this fits, little more than is had by a Dwarvish boy.”

He was bright red, now, but he said, “There is enough.  To be pleasing to my eyes.”

“Well,” Bella said.  “Good.”  Then, after the span of a breath, “Do you think, if we tried, we could be more ridiculous?”

“Perhaps,” he said, and stepped closer, one hand reaching up to brush her hair back behind her ear, and then linger at her reddened cheek.  “Are you still angry with me?”

“I don’t know,” Bella said.  “I don’t care too much, though, at the moment.”  She took the one step that separated them and wrapped her arms around his waist; he returned the embrace with a long exhale that she could feel in her own chest.  

“You didn’t shout at Tauriel,” she said.

“No.  She does . . . seem to care for him.  Kíli.”

“You _did_ shout at Galadriel.”

“I made you no promises about that one.”

“No,” Bella sighed.  “No, you didn’t.  Would you?”

To her surprise, there was no immediate denial, but a pause in which she thought she could almost feel him thinking.  “Not yet.  No aid came from Lothlórien, either, against the dragon . . . but they come to our aid now.  And Kíli -”  He paused again.  “The wound was no longer poisoned, but nor was it healing well.  He may keep the full use of his leg because of elvish healing, twice over, and because one elf asked the favor of another.  I do not know even what I feel.”

It was on the tip of Bella’s tongue to suggest that _gratitude_ might be appropriate, but she held the words back.  

“How long, do you think?” she asked.  “Before the orcs are here.”

“If they marched from Dol Guldur three days hence . . . I cannot say with any certainty, but we should have a week at the least.  Perhaps two, if we are lucky.”

“Can Dain and his army get here by then?”  She couldn’t consider the possibility that Daín would not take the word of a raven that the mountain had been reclaimed - that Daín might not come to their aid at all.  

“No.”


	21. Repairs and Unfinished Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> . . guess who realized she made a big old error with regard to (movie) canon? Meeeee! . . . the front door to Erebor was relative small, and wood, not stone. (Though who exactly repaired it after Smaug burst through it the first time, I’m not sure.) So. Um. In this AU it’s stone, and big. That’ll be all. 
> 
> Also: fudging the timing of a few Silmarillion-canonish things, for the sake of plot and such. Odds are if that’s gonna bother you, you ran screaming from this entire franchise a while ago, but I thought I’d warn you anyway. :) 
> 
> . . . and now for the actual CHAPTER SPECIFIC WARNINGS: Let’s see, discussion of chemical warfare, torture, vague reference to rape, and a fair degree of fictional-race racism.

^*^*^*^

Bella stood in the bustling entrance hall and frowned up at the door - or rather, at the half of the door that was yet completed, and the shattered edges of the walls around it, and the scaffolding and levers and pulleys that had been rigged up on both sides.  It stood now nearly twice as tall as any of the men who had been enlisted to aid in the more mundane aspects of its reconstruction - though only the dwarves knew how to mend the stone, and some knew better than others.  

It had been four days since Galadriel brought Gandalf.  Two of those days had been devoted almost entirely to seeing the people of the Lake settled, stores put aside, fish and meat smoked or salted or laid out on ice cut from the lake and carted to the mountain’s cellars.  Dwarven remains had to be moved to make room for the refugees, and careful record kept of it.  The plumbing had to be put back in order, if they didn’t want to all die of their own filth and disease once the gate was shut - or of thirst, for that matter, though clean water ran through deep caves below the lowest delvings.  

Bella had thought that it might make more sense to settle the refugees there and be done with it, but there were no vents or chimneys down that low, and certainly none of the carefully crafted shafts up to the surface, inlaid with crystal and mirrors, that allowed daylight to reach the upper parts of the mountain’s interior.  Without fires, there would be utter black, and with them, there would soon be very little air.  The dwarves had known that water for the precious thing it was, and had never meant to allow settlement near it.  

It had also come to her attention, in that time, that while the hidden door had been the only quiet and secret way into the mountain, there had once been battlements to either side of the gate, two levels of them, that stood wide open above a public square.  Higher yet were terraces that had once held gardens and open-air sitting rooms.  

The dragon had done a crude job of blocking those, with rock gouged from the walls and bits of melted metal to hold it together, much as he had roughly bent the hinges of the front gate back into place to shut those doors.  Neither would have been much of an obstacle had there not been the need for stealth - which the orcs would presumably not feel.  There were places where a well-struck blow with a hammer would send wide swaths of it tumbling down, Thorin had told her privately - and no time to do better.

No time, and no means, though that was not a thing anyone had yet said aloud.  

Gräc had returned from the Iron Hills (where old Roäc had stayed; he had managed the journey, but only just.)  Daín would come; this was proclaimed loudly and often, in hearing of the men of the lake, as was the incipient arrival of the elvish forces.  The orcs marched to a slaughter, Thorin said, trapped between the elves to the west and the dwarves to the east, with the mountain in front of them and the lake to their back.  All those within the mountain need do to have victory was wait.  

But Bella had seen Bard, too, eying the door’s progress.  The Master wanted a fine suite of rooms, and gold and jewels and more food than was wise for anyone to be eating, but Bard wanted every able body armed and as armored as they could be made, even the women, even the older children.  He had begun to hold drills with the men in one of the open squares, practicing with spears they had only ever used to skewer fish.  

Bard looked up at the battlements too, and sent runners back to the lake to bring as many fishing nets as could be carried.  Thorin watched him, and he watched Thorin, and here and there a terse nod of acknowledgment was given - and nets were nailed in place behind the dragon’s rubble walls, nets that would surely rip, but might buy them a little time.  

Gwaihir had gone to Mirkwood - and had not returned.

Gandalf still slept, and Galadriel never ventured far from him, though she had those who had been injured in Laketown when the dragon fell brought to her.  She was their healer, now, along with the lakemen’s midwife and their barber.  Óin could not be spared from those tasks that dwarves alone might attend.  Tauriel trained with the men, her face very blank and her voice without inflection as she corrected this one’s stance or that one’s aim.  She and Bard traded grim looks too.  

These things were in her mind, as Bella stood lost in thought.  But then she began to feel eyes on her; she had stared and brooded for too long, and there were too many of the people of Laketown about for that.  It wouldn’t do for them to guess what she was thinking.  

She turned and made her way back across the entrance hall, weaving between men and women and trying not to feel absurd as these tall folk ducked their heads knuckled their brows to her.  


Bella now possessed a full suit of dwarvish armor, as Thorin had promised - a rather mismatched one, but it would serve its purpose.  That sat waiting in the room she shared with Tauriel (shared for propriety’s sake).  How she was dressed at the present moment served another end entirely.

She needed to be a queen such as would inspire the faith and trust of the people.  

Some of this consisted, (rather more sensibly, she thought), of being seen to be wise and useful in her role - in decision-making and task-assigning and even in the leading of prayers.  So she had done, and done rather well, Bella thought to herself.  For as much good as it would do them, preparations for the care and feeding of the soon-to-be-besieged mountain were running smoothly.  

But she had to be something more, as well, Thorin said - a king or queen was not merely a manager of practical matters, but a figure of pride, an object of devotion.  A symbol.  And so her hair was elaborately braided and she was decked out in velvet and fur, which was at least warm, if far more constricting than what had become customary to her over the course of the quest.  And lovely.  She did enjoy beautiful things, and it was a bit thrilling to  _ be  _ a beautiful thing, if also very odd.  And she had not at all missed wearing a corset.

So she made her way into the mountain and down, walking the same path she had trod twice already today, looking grand and unafraid and taking stock of this and that as she went.  Was this hunting party back, and had they caught anything?  Did that delving have enough firewood, and had everyone been shown how to open the chimneys?  Yes, the plumbing would be working very, very soon.  She couldn’t say with any certainty that these rooms were not haunted, no, but if they were, it would be by the benevolent ghosts of good folk, no cause for alarm.  No, the scouts had spotted no orcs yet - but yes, they were very sure they were coming.  And  _ how is the little one’s leg today?  Oh, that looks much better than yesterday! _

No matter how much she felt like a child only pretending to be a princess, she really wasn’t so bad at it.  With a little practice, a little time to grow accustomed, she was beginning to feel she might make a very good queen.  

If she or any of them lived that long.  

The further down she went the more the crowd thinned, until eventually she came to a small room near the forges, where she found Balin working alone.  

He looked up when she entered, and thanks be to all the Valar, just smiled, and did nothing that might be in any way construed as obeisance.

“Good day to you,” he said, and then carried on with his work - which seemed to involve a number of glass bowls containing liquids and powders of various forms, some of them being heated over small oil lamps.  The tongues of flame licked the bottoms of the bowls and sent curls of ash up their sides.  It smelled odd and sharp, and Balin wore thick leather gloves.  

“Is that for the doors?” Bella asked.  

“Ah, no,” Balin said.  “No, for that I haven’t the means, not here, at least.  This is for if the doors give.”

“What does it do?”

“It clings like oil,” Balin said, “And burns flesh like fire, and water will only spread it.  It can be poured over the walls, or, I thought, you could wrap a rag soaked with it around a stone.  Might make Ori’s slingshot a bit more formidable; would just have to make sure the lad had good gloves.”

“Well,” Bella said, “That sounds  . . . well it sounds terrible, honestly, but that’s good, isn’t it?  That’s the point.  In a battle.”  

He gave her a rather pitying glance.  “Never be sorry to hate such things.”

“I’m not,” Bella insisted.  “But I won’t be much good to you if I can’t bear to think on them.”

“There’s no shame in tending to other things,” Balin said.  “Leave the planning of pain and death to those of us long hardened to it.”

“We’re not going to get that door finished in time,” Bella said, at which he looked up sharply from his task.  

“Are the men saying so?” Balin asked.

“No,” Bella said.  “No, though Bard suspects.  But the higher up the work goes, the slower and trickier it gets, to put the stones properly in place and hold them there while they set.  The stones are in more pieces, too, and we don’t have enough of the  . . . the potions and powders and what have you that you need to put them back together.  I may know nothing about how all of that works, but I can see how much we’ve used thus far to complete half the door’s height, and I can see that we’ve got maybe half of that left now.  There are more empty barrels than full.  We could find more in shops in other delvings, like we did at the first, but it’ll be dribs and drabs.  You’ve already plundered your largest store of it, and it’s simply not enough.” 

Balin grimaced.  “I’d hoped you’d not have worked that out just yet.”

“I will be fighting, Balin,” Bella replied, thought she wanted to snap that she might be no battle-hardened warrior, but she was neither blind nor a fool.  He meant well.  “Every man, woman and child in this mountain may be fighting, by the end of it, but I certainly will, from the start.”

“Aye,” he said, and sighed.  “Of course you will, lass, of course you will.  With your magic ring and your little elvish letter-opener, may the Maker forgive us.  We ought to have left you in your Shire.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Bella said, and found a sudden lump in her throat.  “Balin.  I’d not trade this, all we’ve been through, and Thorin, and - and all of you.  I’d not trade it for anything.  Even if this is the end.”

“No?”  And he rested his hands on the edge of the workbench and let his head fall forward.  “Well, that’s something.  I don’t wish you gone, just safe, and no part of what’s to come.”  

“Can I help?” Bella asked, and nodded at the table.  

“You could,” Balin said, “But I’m not letting you.  Might spoil your finery.”  

“There are hundreds of abandoned closets full of finery.”

He sighed, and looked up.  “When it comes to it,” he said, holding her gaze, “and this is put to use - I’ll not have you knowing it was your hands that made it.  It’s not like fighting with a sword or a bow; this will cling, in other ways, to those who use it as much as those it is used upon.”

“Then why make it at all, if it’s so terrible?” Bella asked.  “Surely we’ve enough weapons.  More weapons than bodies to wield them.”

“Because we are outnumbered,” Balin said, “Our walls are weakened.  And most of those able bodies have no more idea what to do with those weapons than you know what to do with these powders.  Fear is a weapon itself, and we’re not in a place to throw any advantage aside.  This is an evil thing, yes, but those orcs will do worse if they get through, and to innocents with no chance of defending themselves.  I’ll bear it.  And you won’t.”  

Bella swallowed and nodded and lifted her chin resolutely; she would not cry.  “That’s - that’s very - thank you, Balin.”

“Don’t think on it,” he said, and shrugged, and carried on with his work.

“I should - the plumbing,” Bella said.  “Should check on that.”

“Give a yell when it’s suppertime, will you?” Balin asked.  “Or I’ll forget.”

“Of course.”

“And lass?” 

“Yes?” Bella asked, pausing in the doorway.

“You look quite lovely,” he said.  “Like a proper queen.”  

^*^*^*^

“How are you,  _ meleth nîn _ ?” Tauriel asked.  She folded down beside Kíli and picked up one of the arrows he was fletching.  “This is fine work.”

“I’m going out of my mind,” Kíli answered darkly.  “But otherwise, well.”  A few of the men working nearby looked up at the sharpness of his voice.  Most of them were old or feeble or both, because otherwise they’d be elsewhere, doing more important things.

“You leg needs to heal,” Tauriel told him, for perhaps the hundredth time in the past handful of days.  “If you worsen the injury now, you will be no use in the battle to come.”

“I know that,” he said, slicing through the shaft of a goosefeather; the movement was both precise and vicious, and yet not at all satisfying.  “And here I sit, minding your advice.  I just hate it, that’s all.  Fíli’s out there, scouting, being useful.”  Alone, where Kíli could neither aid nor protect him.  

“If you were with him, he would be far less useful,” Tauriel pointed out.  “He would worry for you.”

“I don’t need -”  The knife slipped, and slid into the pad of his thumb.  He cursed and flung it away and stood - which did still make the large muscle of his leg clench in pain.  He would have brought the cut to his own lips to lick the blood away, but Tauriel caught his hand.

“I’m fine, it’s a scratch,” he muttered.  

“I know,” she replied, and wiped the blood away, smearing it between her fingers.  It welled up again, but very little, and yet she did not release his hand.  Instead she turned it over, examining it.  Her thumb brushed across his palm, curious and light - but when that drew a shudder from him, and he caught her eyes, there was intent there.

He curled his fingers around hers.  She had gone up on her knees, which put her a little below his standing height.  “Tauriel?”

“I have been thinking,” she said quietly, and flushed, and looked down.  “Not here.”  

“Oh - right,” he agreed, glancing around them - and finding that they were, as ever, the center of everyone’s hastily-averted attention.  Even in a room full of those of the race of men, who had no stake in it, the union of an elf and a dwarf was a strange thing.  

“The Lady Galadriel would like to examine your leg again,” Tauriel said, a bit more loudly.  

“Right, let’s . . go do that,” Kíli agreed, and knew that if Fíli were here, he would be mocking them both mercilessly for how obvious they were being.  

But Fíli wasn’t there, and this,  her , was the only thing that felt right in the world anymore.

It didn’t take long for Tauriel to find an unoccupied room and tug him into it; she had very likely planned this, he realized.  

As soon as the door was shut and the candle she carried safely set in a sconce, Kíli caught her hands again.  His thumb stung; he didn’t care.  She met him halfway as he went up on his toes, bringing their lips together.

It was sweet and eager and brief, as all of their kisses thus far had been; when she drew away, her hands were trembling in his.  

Kíli’s eyes had adjusted to the dim light by then, and he saw that there were in some manner of sitting room - one that had been undisturbed before they came, to judge by the great swathes of dust everywhere.  Everywhere except for the divan against the far wall - that had been swept clean.  

She had planned this.  And had cleared something very like to a bed.

“Tauriel?” he asked again, and tried to control his voice - to keep it from quaking with the heady mingling of uncertainty and lust.  

He failed, in that, but her hands still shivered, so perhaps that was alright.  

“We may die here,” she said, and his heart leapt and pounded.  

“We might not,” he answered.  “I know things look grim, but there’s no need to be despairing.  We only have to hold a few days, and -”

“They cannot seal the door,” Tauriel interrupted.  

He scowled.  “Has everyone figured that out, and we’re all just not talking about it?”

“I have not heard, but they must suspect.”

“Wonderful,” Kíli said, and blew out a breath.  “Nothing like panic and distrust to take things from bad to worse.  If the men think we’ve lied to them, they might not follow Thorin, and that’ll be a disaster.”

“Yes,” Tauriel agreed.  “But if they are told now, what then?  Some will flee back to their lake, and hope the orcs will pass them by.  We will be weakened, and they will be slaughtered.”

“It’s not good,” Kíli admitted.  “But it’s only one door, one way for them to get in; it means there will be a fight, but not a hopeless one.”

“I am not giving up hope,” Tauriel said.

“What are you doing, then?” Kíli asked gently.  “Tell me.”

“Being reckless?” she said, with a quirk of her lips.  “I grow impatient with your dwarvish customs.”

“Which customs would those be?” he asked, though he knew, his body knew, felt the promise of her nearness.  

“So much planning and ritual, for so simple a thing,” she answered, scowling.  “Your ways are like your halls, ornate and complicated and rigid.  I know I am a stranger here, and mean no disrespect to your kin -”

“My kin may have earned a little disrespect,” Kíli countered.  “And you’re not a stranger  here -  here, with me, just us.  In Erebor, maybe, but - just forget Erebor.  Nothing exists outside this room.”

“All elves need do to be wed,” Tauriel said, “is to lay together; to be united in flesh and spirit.  Once that is done, it is announced, and  then  there is celebration and feasting.  But it is not the celebration or the feasting or any mere exchange of words that makes a marriage.”

“And . . . you want . . . now?” Kíli asked.   _ He _ wanted.  Oh Maker, did he want.  

“Yes.  Whether we live or die, I want that.”

“Have you ever -” he stopped himself, realizing the foolishness of the question given what she’d just told him, but not before she tilted her head and frowned.

“Have I ever?”

Damn it, he had to go and ruin it, didn’t he?

“So elves.  They only ever - if to lay together is to be married, that means you can’t have - or you’d be married,” he said.  Eloquent.  He wanted to thump his head against the wall.  

“Wood elves - among the guard,” she began, and paused, and looked very much like he felt.  “Many are free with their affections, in the taking of pleasure together.  But not - not joining.”

This would be a great deal easier, Kíli thought, if he knew the less polite elvish words for things, or if she knew how dwarves spoke of them.  

“But I was not one to make merry that way - not because I am so cold as that, but it was not in my nature to take it so lightly,” Tauriel rushed to say.  “I do know the way of such things, but only from others’ tales.  Of which there were many,” she added, with a wry little nod - Kíli could well imagine it.  

“I’ve, um,” Kíli started, and swallowed hard.  “Dwarves aren’t like that.  I mean, we’re not  _ supposed _ to do  _ anything _ until we’re wed, but if we do - whether it’s just touching or it’s all of it, it’s the vows that make it a marriage.  Otherwise it’s just -”  Fucking.  He couldn’t say that to her.  

“You have lain with another?” Tauriel guessed, and he hated himself for the wounded sound in her voice.

“It’s different,” he insisted.  It hadn’t always been; there had been at least twice that he’d thought himself in love.  “And a long time ago.”  Before the start of the quest was a long time, wasn’t it?  Probably not to a six hundred year old elf.  “I’m not bound to anyone - never even wanted to be, before you.”  

“Anyone.  More than one?”

“Five.  Six,” he said, wincing.  “Is it better or worse if I say four of those didn’t mean a thing?”

“I don’t know,” Tauriel said, and drew her hands away, wrapping her arms around herself.  

“It’ll mean something, with you,” he promised.  “It’ll mean  _ everything . _  I shouldn’t have told you, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“No,” she said, and drew a shaky breath.  “Our ways are different.”  She gave him a searching look.  “It is the words, the vows before witnesses, that will matter to you?”

“They’ll matter,” Kíli said carefully.  “I wouldn’t feel really married without them, but - I want to have you,” he said, because hang being careful of his words, it wasn’t working.  “And I want to marry you.  And if those things are one in the same for elves, but not for dwarves, I don’t think that actually matters too much here because I feel both.  And more than either of those I love you, and I want to give you what  _ you _ want.  To be what you need.”

“You  _ are _ ,” Tauriel said.  “I’d just never thought -”  She inhaled, and exhaled, deep and steadying  - and then gave a half a laugh, a little snort.  “You’ll know what you’re  _ doing. _ ”  There was a cautious, conciliatory smile on her face.  

He grinned, wide and relieved.  “It’s not that tricky,” he said, and reached out to settle his hands carefully on her hips.  “I’m sure you’ll learn fast.”

Tauriel unwound and wrapped her arms loosely about his shoulders.  She leaned down, eyes closed, until her forehead rested against his - a very dwarvish gesture, that, one she'd picked up quickly.  

“I’ve made a complete mess of this,” Kíli said.  “And you went to the trouble of clearing all that dust.”

She laughed.  

He slid his hands up her sides, cautiously, so carefully, and when she did not object, back down again.  Up and down, slowly, a little higher and a little lower each time, soothing to him and, he hoped, to her too.  “Should we go lay down on those lovely, not-very-dusty cushions there, hrmm?  Or have I ruined things completely?”

“You haven’t ruined things,” Tauriel said, and opened her eyes.  “Have I?”

“Not even a little bit,” he promised.  

^*^*^*^

No elf had ever set foot within the hall that held the great forges of Erebor, even before the discord with the Woodland Realm began.  Such places, like the mines themselves, were nigh unto sacred.  Here they molded the bounty of the earth, as their Maker had created them.  It was a place for dwarves alone.  

And the Lady of Loríen was walking, bare of foot, between the furnaces.  

Her hair was unbound and her gown, though modest, only loosely tied; she looked like a child crept from her bed in the middle of the night, and equally as much like a wandering wraith.  

Thorin put down thongs and hammer with a clang, then swore and turned back again to the coals to pull the shield he had been mending free of them.  The sight of her there, where she did not belong, had nearly made him forget his work - which seemed somehow only fitting.  She profaned this place and and disrupted its purpose by her very presence.

“Have you become lost?” he called out, stalking across the floor toward her, ripping off his gloves as he did so.   “This is no place for you.”  

“No,” she said, looking up and about, though she sounded very little concerned about it.  “It is not.”

“I will show you back to the hallway,” Thorin said, and though he tried to keep his tone mild - doubtless she did not comprehend her offense, elves were thoughtless creatures - the words came out in a growl.  

“I may not belong here,” Galadriel replied, meeting his furious gaze with ease, “but nor am I lost.  I came seeking you.”

“You have found me.  We may speak elsewhere,” Thorin snapped, and stormed past her without pause.  

He had to glance over his shoulder to be sure she followed, silent as her footsteps were.  It only infuriated him more.  This was a place of metal and stone, of deep earth and fire; her elvish sorcery was an insult to his ancestors and their Maker.  How dare she walk so lightly here, as if the earth did not bind her?  

It was at the back of his mind that she could doubtless walk no other way; that the lightness of her steps was surely as much a part of her being as a dwarf’s sure knowledge of which way the center of the earth lay.  These thoughts came in a voice quite like Belladonna’s, and for her sake, he tried to cool his ire before he spoke.

The lady Galadriel was their ally, if she was true to her word - a thing he would have doubted in the very marrow of his bones, but that she remained here.  She would not stay within the mountain if she did intend to aid in its defense.  He might give little credit to elvish promises, but he knew how they valued their own long lives.  

“How fares the wizard?” he asked, when they were several hallways gone, past even the linger scent of molten metal in the air.  He could think of no other reason why she would seek him.  

“He mends, but slowly,” Galadriel replied.  “He has yet to wake.”

“He is unchanged, then,” Thorin said.

“Yes.”

“Was there something else?” he demanded.  “I have no time for idle conversation.”

Galadriel watched him closely, then, silent for a long moment in which his impatience only grew.

“I expect you know little of metalwork,” Thorin ground out, “But arms and armor do not grow like trees, and do not mend themselves.  Nor does a kingdom on the brink of war rule itself, as you may know better.  Speak, or let me return to my work.”

“You have cause to hate me,” she said.

Thorin did not gape, but it was a near thing.  For a long moment he was without words.

“I knew of the dragon, and what had become of your people,” Galadriel said.  “And did nothing.”

“Do not speak of it,” Thorin said - snarled, for if she would not be silent, he feared what he might say or do.  If he drove her from the mountain now, that would surely be the end of any elvish aid to come, and would just as surely be their doom.  “What is done is done.”  

“It is not done,” Galadriel said, and there was something low and feral in her voice, too, beneath its insipid elvish lilt.  “An army of Morgoth’s abominations marches on this mountain, our ancient enemy has returned, and the Greenwood festers like a poisoned wound!  No, this fight is not done, nor my role in it.”

“Is this an apology?” Thorin demanded, holding his temper by a thread - he wanted to lash out with more than words, to strike her down where she stood.  “Do you come begging forgiveness?  Seek me again when the orcs are defeated - when you have been true to your word and redeemed some of the honor of your race.  I have no time for you now.”

He would have turned to go, but she said, in the voice that had held the wizard back at the brink of death, “You  _ will  _ hear me.”  And though he did not wish it, though he thought he would rather die right there than have her know she frightened him, his feet stilled.  

“Speak quickly, then,” he answered, hands in fists at his sides and chin up, “And plainly, if you are able.”

“Orcs took my daughter,” Galadriel said, “some years before your mountain fell.”

Of all the things she might have said, Thorin had not counted this among them.  He had known, in some vague way, that she had a daughter - the wife of Elrond of Rivendell, if he recalled his long-ago lessons correctly - and that something had happened to her, but had not thought long on it.

“If it is vengeance you seek, you are welcome to it,” Thorin said.  “All I care is that the orcs die.”

“They took her from the open road, within miles of our borders,” Galadriel said, as if he had not spoken.  “They slaughtered her guard and her companions, but her, they did not kill.  They knew her for one of high birth, one whose pain would be the pain of many.  I do not know all of what they did to her, for she would not speak of it, but I saw her soon after she was reclaimed.  It was her own sons who found and freed her, who had to see their mother stripped bare and tortured and violated.  But the ones who did this are dead, and Celebrían has sailed to the West.  There is no vengeance to be had.”

“What do you want?” Thorin asked, but without the fire that had fueled his words before.  This was too familiar a tale, one he had heard more times than he cared to count among his own people - though there was no harbor to which they might venture and sail away from the memory of their torment.

“I want you to know that in the months that she was gone, I called for aid from all lands to find her,” Galadriel said.  “From men and dwarves and elves, from the great eagles and the shepherds of the forest, from any and all who would listen.”

And then, with a feeling as though everything within him had been turned to ice and water, Thorin knew what she would say next.  

“I called upon the dwarves of Erebor,” Galadriel told him, “who traded far and wide, and heard news from many lands.  If any might have heard a rumor, a whisper of where my child had been taken, that news would surely come to Erebor.  But Erebor did not answer me.”

He’d known - not of this one act, itself, but of course he’d known.  Hadn’t he watched, despairing, as his grandfather drew further and further away from the world, caring only for his gold?  Hadn’t he known that they were the greatest kingdom of Middle Earth, that many depended upon them?  

He recalled hearing that something had happened to Celebrían of Rivendell, but there had been more urgent worries, and he had paid it little mind.

“And so, when the dragon came, and I was yet lost in my grief,” Galadriel said, “I did not answer Erebor.”  

There was nothing, nothing he could say.  

“For the bitterness and grief of one heart, all your people suffered,” she concluded.  “I was wrong.  I do not ask for your forgiveness, Thorin Oakenshield, but I would have you know my regret.  Learn from it.”  

Then she turned and walked away, on her silent feet.  

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Don't hate me for the Kiliel fade-to-black, the continuation of that scene just didn't fit in this chapter! Maybe I'll write an outtake.)


	22. Intended

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER SPECIFIC WARNINGS: This chapter contains depictions of sexual activities between consenting adults. If you're underage or that offends you, please skip to the next chapter. :)

^*^*^*^

Bella found Thorin in a secluded hallway behind the forges, and was only able to do so because he’d left footprints in the dust (as had another pair of feet which, having been bare, must have been Galadriel’s – the elven lady being the only other person within the mountain, aside from Bella herself, who seemed to appreciate the sense in not burdening oneself with great, clunky boots.)

“Thorin?”

He startled at her approach.  “What is it?  Am I needed above?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Bella said.  “Things are going . . . well, they’re going.  Being done.  Preparations being made, all that.  I wondered where you’d wandered off to, when I didn’t find you at the forges, that’s all.”

“Here,” he said, with a gesture around him and a twist of his lips.

“Yes, thank you,” Bella retorted, watching him closely.  “Thorin, are you alright?”

“I am –“  he began dismissively, but then stopped.  His expression was grim and haunted, and while there was certainly cause enough for it, Bella did not think it was the looming battle that made him so.  He had been somber that morning, but determinedly so, full of a sort of dire, banked ferocity.  This – wandering off alone, and the brooding uncertainty of his whole manner - was not that.

“You’re what?” Bella asked.  “Thorin?”

He blew out a breath and shook his head.  “I have no time for maudlin musing on the past, not now of all times.”

“But you are, regardless,” Bella pointed out.  “Getting lost in your thoughts, and at a guess I’d say you can’t help it.  Did you – find something?”  Or _someone_ , perhaps - there were yet scattered corpses enough for an age’s worth of shock and grief.

“I learned something,” Thorin said.  “From that elvish – from the Lady Galadriel,” he amended, at the narrowing of her eyes.  “Something of my grandfather, that I had not known, though I should have.”

“Not something good, I gather,” Bella said, and wondered at the fact that he seemed to _believe_ Galadriel – she wouldn’t have thought he’d believe the elf if she said the sky was blue, let alone on some matter of history concerning his own kin.

“No,” Thorin agreed.  “No, nothing good.”  He paused.  “I have heard Men say that the sins of a father will  be visited upon his sons.  Do Hobbits believe so?”

Whatever it was he’d learned, this was not a new fear, and he was right, they didn’t have time for it.  The mountain needed its king - but its king was just a dwarf, just a person like any other.  She wanted to snap at him, and yet her heart ached for him – and, well, he seemed to be doing a fair enough job of scolding himself.

“There is a saying,” Bella answered.  “’What is not reaped is sown.’”

He gave her a questioning look.

“Right, and that makes much more sense if you know something of farming or gardens, doesn’t it?” Bella said.  “If you let a field go to seed, whatever you planted there will spring back up the next year on its own, and it’ll be a lot of work to pull it all out or turn it all under if you want to grow something different there.”

“What one generation does not attend, becomes a burden on the next,” Thorin interpreted.

“Yes,” Bella agreed.  “It’s a wisdom generally applied to the paying of debts or the upkeep of houses, mind, not the doings of kings and kingdoms, but . . . yes.  But Thorin, the idea is – well, that no one deserves to inherit an untended field.  You don’t deserve any of this mess, no matter what your grandfather did.  You’ll do better for Fili and Kili and – and our children, if we have them,” she concluded, her pulse giving leap at the idea.

If they should live long enough to make them.

“You have great faith in me,” he said, though he looked away down the hall as he spoke.

“Yes,” Bella said, “I do.  I’m also going to make damned sure of it myself.”

He turned back to her chuckling; she returned his smile, but it faded quickly, as some new dark thought occurred to him.

“What I said of Tauriel,” Thorin began uncomfortably, to Bella’s confusion – Tauriel?  What had Tauriel to do with this?  “That an elf may not be able to bear a dwarf’s child.  It comes to my mind now that you may have heard a reproach in that, one that I did not intend.”

Bella tilted her head at him.  “Why would I?”

He gave her a wary sort of look, as if he suspect she might be feigning ignorance.  “For all that I fear the legacy of my forefathers, I do hope for children,” he said, very carefully.  “But if we cannot - if we are too different - I have an heir.  I will be content.”

Bella blinked at him.

“Had you not considered it?” he asked, and she suddenly understood his caution better; he was afraid that she hadn’t.  That thinking on it now, she might decide that the odds were too poor, and abandon him – of course that was where his thoughts would wander, in such a mood as he was in.

“Thorin,” Bella said slowly.  “We can have children.  I mean, hobbits and dwarves can.  My mother had some trouble, but I’m very little like her in any other way, so - here’s hoping.”

“How can you know?” he asked, frowning.

“That I had no brothers or sisters?”

“That the joining of a hobbit and a dwarf may be fruitful,” he said.  “I know of no such union; none has ever been recorded in our histories.  It is a rare enough that a dwarf marry outside his race at all, but when it has occurred, it has always been with the daughters of men.”

Oh dear.

“Your people in Ered Luin trade with the Shire,” Bella told him, and hoped she wouldn’t have to spell it out.

“Yes,” Thorin agreed, frowning.  “But there have been no marriages. With my people few and dwindling, it was a thing I minded closely.”

“No, there were no marriages,” Bella said, in the gentle sort of tone she might use in explaining to one of her younger cousins why roast chicken dinner meant one less fluffy bird in the yard.  “But there are a few little half-dwarves running around the Shire.”

Thorin stared a moment, then turned away and cursed under his breath.  “I see.  I did not know.”

And that had likely not helped his mood at all.  Bella sighed.  “Sometimes you worry me.”

“That I am dismayed to learn that my people have behaved dishonorably toward yours?”

“That you’re surprised that your people have behaved like - well, like people,” she said.  “Really, Thorin, you send eager young men trading, and you don’t expect them to  - well.”

“No,” Thorin said.  “I do not.  I expect them to consider the honor of their names and of all dwarves, and besides that, to value their children and the mothers who bore them.”

“If it helps any, I never heard of one of those children starving or homeless,” Bella offered.  “Nor their mothers, though of course they suffered in reputation and prospects.  I won’t say there were no broken hearts left behind, but so far as I ever heard, there was at least regular coin.”  And she would not point out that Thorin’s outrage might, itself, be part of the reason no young hobbit brides with round bellies had been brought back to Ered Luin.

“Better than if they did not provide,” Thorin muttered.  “But still a disgrace.”

“It happens,” Bella insisted.  “It’s what young people do.”

He looked at her rather sharply, but then quickly away.  “Hobbits are a forgiving people.”

“If you want to ask something,” Bella said, “ask it; I don’t mind.”

“There is nothing I need ask,” Thorin insisted, but very stiffly.

“No, I haven’t,” Bella said.

“You needn’t -”

“Well, I want to,” she retorted, but gently.  “I don’t want secrets, and I most certainly don’t want assumptions.  I’ve . . . kept company, with a lad or two, but that was years ago, and it never went so far as - well, as any chance of a child.”

“I -”  He swallowed.  “I would not have thought less of you, I swear it.”

“I know,” Bella said.

“But I am glad,” he admitted.

“I know that, too,” she said, and smiled.  “And - you?”

“Much the same as you,” he said, and smiled back, and looked absurdly relieved.

“Really?” Bella asked, then flushed.  “And that came out all wrong, didn’t it?  I don’t mean to imply that you’re - that you would do anything - dishonorable.  By a woman.  I just meant - well.  You’re a good bit older than me, and were a prince, and - and well, looking like you do -”  She stopped, and closed her eyes, mortified.  “What I mean is - oh, hang it all, I think I’ll just stop talking now.”

A finger under her chin tilted her face up, and prompted her to open her eyes.  He was smiling, a wide and genuine smile that made it hard to regret her stumbling words, foolish though she felt.

“Looking as I do?” he repeated.

“Oh, hush,” Bella muttered.  “As if you don’t know it.”

“Oh, but I don’t,” he said. “Tell me.”

“You have a face like a goat.  I thought surely someone would have been moved to pity.”

“Dwarves consider goats to be noble, handsome creatures.”

“Of course they do.”

He kissed her – and it began in a way that was becoming sweetly familiar, gentle affection and a certain promise of more.  Then it changed; Bella couldn’t say who began it, whose arm crushed the other closer, whose fingers first thrust into the other’s hair and curled possessively.  But at some point one kiss turned into another turned into something that was less about mouths than whole bodies.  Her breasts pressed against his chest, and one of his legs found its way between hers.  His fingers dug into her scalp and pressed along her spine, clutched at her hip, ran shuddering up her ribs.  His beard rasped against the corner of her lips, along her jaw.

She felt the press of his arousal against her belly – and she must have tensed, flinched, something, because he was suddenly an arm’s length away, breathing hard.

“Forgive me,” Thorin said.

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Bella answered, a bit shakily, and certain she must be very red in the face.  “It’s fine.”  She paused a moment, licked her lips, and added, “Women are lucky, no one can tell if we’re - well.”

His eyes, which had been studying the floor to one side of her feet, shot back up to her face, full of heat – and Bella felt suddenly, wildly brash and brave.  She took the one step that separated them.  “We _are_ to be married,” she said – and did not point out that they were, on the other hand, also rather likely to be dead in the next day or so.  It didn’t really need saying.

He put his hands on her shoulders and lowered his forehead to hers – a common gesture of dwarven affection, but also a way to avoid looking her in the eye, Bella was beginning to realize.  She settled her own hands at his waist.

“I would not for the world dishonor you,” he said raggedly.

“No, of course not,” Bella agreed.  “I’m not suggesting anything that could . . . be fruitful.  I may know little yet of what is expected of a queen, but I’m fairly sure one is not mean to be hiding a big belly beneath her wedding dress.”

His fingers clenched on her shoulders, but he made no other reply; the way he breathed, the tension in him, she might have thought he was in pain.

“Would you like, if I . . ?” Bella asked, and tentatively moved her hand to his thigh.  Her pulse was hammering so hard she felt dizzy – it had been a very, very long time since she had done anything like this.  “I would – would like to.  If you want.”

He groaned.  “You deserve better than fumbling in dark hallways.  I should refuse you.”

“I’ll decide what better things I deserve, thanks,” Bella answered, but gently.  “Are you?  Refusing me?”

“No,” he said, on a long exhale.

“Good,” Bella said, and slid her hand from his thigh to between his legs.  She cupped him in her palm, massaging a little, and he sucked in a sharp breath and his hips jerked forward into the touch.  Bella pressed back, her own breath going short.  Then she went hunting for the fastenings of his trousers.

“Might need some help, here,” she said.

He chuckled, and his hand joined hers, guiding her to clever little latches hidden beneath his belt – but then he caught her wrist.  “Wait.”

“No?” Bella said, and tried not to sound frustrated; it was certainly his prerogative to change his mind, even if she was feeling wound up tight as the strings of a fiddle, and likely to go mad.

“No, it’s only -”  He gave a rueful huff.  “I cannot walk through the halls among the Lakemen in soiled trousers, nor spill all over the floor, and I have nothing –“

“Well, then,” Bella said, relieved and amused, “It’s fortunate, isn’t it, that your silly little hobbit of a betrothed likes to carry a _handkerchief_?”

He shook his head and laughed, a bit wildly, a bit desperately.  She dug in her pockets – quite cleverly concealed within her skirts, she did admire the design – and then brandished the linen square with one raised brow.

Thorin kissed her, quick and hard and still smiling a rather bewildered smile when he drew back.  “You are a treasure.”

“Mmhmm,” Bella agreed, and worked hand and handkerchief through layers of cloth until she found hot skin.  His laughter turned to a gasp, then a groan, as she explored a bit, curious as to the shape and size of him.  It was tight and awkward with her hand trapped inside his clothing, but it seemed unwise for a king to be standing about in the hall with his cock out, however remote the hall in question - not that there’d be much question what they were doing, if someone came by, but, well, this was a _little_ more prudent.

From what she felt, dwarves were not dissimilar to hobbit men, which was a relief.  She hadn’t expected any huge difference, really, but, well.  She was of an imaginative nature.  It might have been hairy all over, like their faces – and she’d not have minded, exactly, if it were, but was glad enough that it wasn’t.  Just soft, loose skin, over the hard core of him, and it drew low, strangled sounds from his throat when she tried to learn as much of him as she could with tracing fingertips.

Much more of that would be unkind, though, and she’d have him at her leisure later.  Bella curled her hand around him, earning a groan of deepest gratitude as she began (carefully, and mindful of what made his hips jump, what made him shudder) to pull and stroke.

“Love,” Thorin said, the word gasped against her forehead in a puff of hot breath.  “ _Bella ._  I –“

“Shh,” she said.  “I know.”

And then he was pulsing and spilling over her hand, and it was a very good thing she’d not waited to ready the handkerchief, because she hadn’t expected that so quickly.   He sagged against her, back bowed so that he could lay his head on her shoulder.  He pressed a kiss to her neck, then rose to her lips, soft and tender.

He helped her extract the handkerchief from his trousers, at which point the two of them were left looking around for a waste-basket they were unlikely to find.  Bella giggled first – she was still flush and needy, absolutely aching with it, but she could be _patient_ , she _could_.  Thorin smiled in answer, shaking his head at the ridiculousness of it – then shrugged and stuffed the handkerchief into his boot.

Bella wrinkled her nose.

“You have a better idea?” he asked, still smiling.

“No,” she conceded.  “ _Still._ ”

She jumped and shivered when his hands settled again on her hips.  Thorin gave a wordless, low hum, tilting his head at her, a hot gleam in his eye.  “I have more important matters to attend, I think.”

Bella felt her face heating, a sharper heat running up the back of her neck, and an eager, involuntary clench between her thighs.  She shut her eyes, embarrassed even though she knew that to be absurd.  She nodded her head.

“Mmm,” Thorin murmured; a pleased and considering sound.  She opened her eyes to see him kneeling before her.

Her stomach gave a nervous little lurch.  “I don’t – um.”

Thorin’s hands stilled where they had begun to bunch up her skirts, and his expression went immediately serious and concerned.  “I would offer you the same care you have shown me,” he said, “but not if you don’t wish it.”

“Oh, I wish it,” Bella answered, then winced at her own boldness, though it drew a another smile from him.

“If you do not wish it _here_ , or now – you deserve a bed, at the very least, not some cold, dank passageway.”

“Oh, will you leave off with that?” Bella said, but grinned, rueful, to soften it.  “That isn’t it, I just – well.  I’d prefer.”

“I want to please you,” he said.  

“Not your mouth,” Bella finally managed to blurt.  “I don’t care for - not that you were necessarily meaning to – but, well, kneeling, and – I’d rather you didn’t.”

“My hands?” Thorin asked, and to her immense relief, was not eying her oddly at all – he looked only deeply earnest.

“Yes, that – that would.  Yes,” Bella managed, nodding rapidly.

He released her skirts and slipped his hands beneath them, momentarily circling her ankles with his fingers.  “So small,” he murmured, as if in wonder, before stroking up the outsides of her legs, his palms almost scorching hot against her skin.  “You are so strong in spirit, I forget.”

“Flatterer,” Bella said, shivering.

“Mmm,” Thorin agreed easily.  “And now I may need your assistance,” he said, having found the edges of her smallclothes.

“Bow at the front,” Bella told him.  “Just pull them down.”  She’d forgotten how thoughtless in speech she always became when in such a state, and hoped he wasn’t expecting modesty or grace.

From the speed with which he complied, she gathered he was, at the least, unoffended by her bluntness.  Then his thumbs were tracing the inner seam of her thighs, and she reached out for his shoulders to steady herself.

“I had wondered,” Thorin said, tone playful, “about this; like your beardless face, or like your bearded feet?”  His fingers teased at the curls he’d found.

“Feet,” Bella said – as if it needed saying, and could she sound more empty-headed if she tried?

“So I see,” Thorin answered, voice thick and dark, and he was parting her, his fingers slow and curious and maddening – which, she had to admit, she deserved.  She’d done the same to him.  “Or feel, though I am eager to see.”

“You can look,” she said, fear of being caught in the open with her skirts up having fled along with what little control she ever had over her words.

“No,” Thorin said, shaking his head.  “No, I’ll save that.”  The pad of his thumb stroked right up the center of her, and she gave a whimpering little yelp, a very _fortunate_ yelp, as it had him pausing right where she wanted him to be.

“A little jewel, right here,” he said, and circled it – not pressing as much as she’d like, but still it was sweet, so very sweet.

“Do – do dwarf women not?” she asked, and felt a moment’s wild pity for dwarf women, if so.

“I don’t know,” Thorin admitted.  “None has ever allowed me such freedom.”

“But – but you said -”

“Only this,” he answered, and demonstrated by cupping her with his whole hand, the heel of it pressing in a way that might have been satisfying if she hadn’t had better just a moment ago.  “And through cloth, and many, many years ago, when I was young.”

“Oh.”  Were they really having this conversation, with his hands up her skirt?  “You could – what you were doing.  That.”

“This?”

“Yes yes yes _that_ ,” Bella gasped, and pushed hard against him.  He answered with a firmer touch - a quick learner, it seemed, and wasn’t that a fortunate thing?  A delicious thing.  Wonderful.  Everything was delicious and wonderful and he was staring up at her with such a heat in his eyes that it was a wonder she didn’t burst into flames from it.  She was staring right back, couldn’t help it, though she was probably making a number of very silly faces to go with the positively mortifying sounds that were escaping her lips and she was close – she was so close –

\- and suddenly feeling embarrassed and vulnerable and almost afraid.  What would he think of her when the fire had passed?  She was rutting against his hand like an beast, hungry and shameless and -

“Yes, reach for it,” he said, his voice deep and warm and encouraging – had the turn of her thoughts shown on her face?  Oh, of course it had!  “Take what you need, you are beautiful like this, so beautiful, my love.”

She had no words to answer him, just whimpers and the frantic clutching of her hands on his shoulders.  She was likely to leave bruises.

“Yes, my love, my queen,” he murmured, his words a rush of heat over her skin, “Let me see you in your glory, my love, take your due.”

His voice was like another touch, the tiny push she needed, and then she was falling.

Then she was _actually_ falling, and would have cracked her knees on the stone had he not caught her hips and slowed her descent.

“I love you,” he said, lips against her forehead, hands still under her skirts.

“I - you too,” Bella managed, trying to remember how to breathe.

There was a soft, quiet moment, then, without words and full of warmth, just the two of them kneeling on the floor together.  Oh, she had needed that – she had seen that he did, but hadn’t realized that she did as well.   _They_ did.

Then Thorin asked, “Dare I hope for another handkerchief?”

Bella snorted, and he chuckled, and she fished another handkerchief out of another pocket – after all, what was the use of a pocket to each side if she didn’t fill them both?  (Her ring was there, at the bottom of that pocket, but she was careful not to let her fingers brush it and could not have quite said why.)

He tended to tidying her with as much care as he had to pleasing her, then wiped his own hands – then stuffed that handkerchief, too, down his boot.

“Your _boots_ are likely to get with child, at this rate,” Bella observed, which was a completely nonsensical thing to say, but it made him grin.

That was when they heard the great crash, and the whole mountain shook around them.


	23. A Parting and a Council

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG! . . . and it's not a very long chapter, either. But, here it is, and hopefully the next will be quicker. Ensemble dialogue scenes are just ridiculously hard to write.

^*^*^*^

Where the western battlement had been, there was now a gaping hole. The dragon’s patchwork blockade had taken a good portion of the original architecture with it when it fell, columns ripped into stalactites and the walkway torn away in jagged bites. Snow drifted down through the breach. It settled soft and foreboding on the fallen rock and gouged floor, and on those who had come running at the earth-shaking crash.

Dozens of men and women were there already, and half a handful of the dwarves. Bella saw Gloin and Bifur, both staring up at the wall – Gloin looked more affronted than anything, as though it ought to have known better than to fall. Further back stood Balin, who had one of his many eyepieces out. He appeared to be making a more critical assessment of the remnants of the rampart, his scrutiny shifting quickly from point to point. He made tiny, constant adjustments to the telescopic glass, his lips pressed into a hard line. Behind him, and watching him closely, was Bard.

Galadriel knelt to one side of the rubble in a puddle of skirts, the limp body of a young man before her. Bella would not have been able to say if he was living or dead if the elf had not had one hand on his brow, her eyes shut in concentration. Bard’s elder daughter was at the boy’s feet, cutting the cloth away from the bloody, wrong-shaped mass of his leg. A gaunt, grey-bearded man paced beside them, his face contorted and tearful – he would look down at the boy, and then turn, as if he could not bear to see, but then in two or three steps he would turn back, as if he could not bear to look away. Half a dozen times he did this, in just the handful of moments it took for Bella to cast her eyes around the hall.

The whole vast space was full echoing, urgent voices – low, angry arguments, sharp gestures and dire mutterings.

Ori came running in, then. He skidded to a stop with a small cry, his face a picture of awe-struck dismay. Bard looked over at the sound, his attention shifting quickly from Ori to Thorin. He came to them at once, his stride full of grim purpose.

“One of the nets came loose,” Bard told Thorin, not bothering with any other greeting. “Lad thought he could fix it.”

“Who gave him permission?” Thorin demanded.

“No one,” Bard said, grimacing, “Nor would I have done.”

Thorin grunted, but said no more – and then Alfrid came scurrying into the hall, the Master at his heels.

“Oh, that’s just great,” Alfrid said, and Bard’s hands curled into fists at his side. “How’re you going to fix that? That’s months of work. It’ll never be done in time.”

Bard rounded on the smaller man, closing the space between them in three angry steps. “Calm yourself,” he said in a furious whisper, “unless you would see these people lose all heart. What is done is done.”

“But how can that be defended?” the Master asked, flapping a hand at the hole.

“We’ll be fish in a barrel in here!” Alfrid said, jerking free of Bard’s grasp, no calmer and no quieter than he’d been.

“You!” The master pointed an accusing finger at Thorin. “You said we’d be safe here! We brought you all our food and weapons on your word that the mountain could be made secure! What have you to say for yourself, hrmm? Why should we not take it all back?”

The muttering of the crowd grew louder at that, all eyes turning to them, and Bella felt panic rising in her throat. Thorin and Bard wore identical, stony expressions, and Bella clenched her teeth hard enough to make them ache trying to match them. A good queen, she was reasonably certain, would not scold the leader of a neighboring land as if he were an ill-tempered child, no matter how he acted like one. Nor would she call him every foul name she could bring to mind. _But trust that leech of a man to take a disaster and find a way to make it worse!_

“One of your people is wounded,” Thorin said, with what Bella thought was admirable calm. “Doubtless you will wish to see to his welfare first; we may speak in an hour’s time, in the antechamber before the throne.” _And not in front of all these people_ , he did not say, though it was made clear enough.

“Oh no no,” the Master insisted, and _waggled_ the finger that had been pointing. “I will not be put off!”

“We should go back to the lake, Sire, and burn the bridge,” Alfrid said, “Like we’ve done before, when raiders come. These orcs have no business with us, no reason to bother if we cut ourselves off.”

“You know little of the appetites of orcs,” Thorin answered, the edge of a growl creeping into his voice, “if you think they will pass you by.”

“What’ve we got that they want, hrmm?” Alfrid demanded. “It’s you folk with all the gold. This Azog’s grudge is against you, not us.” The Master nodded along.

“The flesh on your bones!” Thorin snapped. “That is what you have that they will want! Azog comes for me and mine, but for what does his army march? For what do such bloodthirsty and contentious creatures as orcs come together in numbers?”

“Promise of spoils!” the Master said, as if that were obvious. “The riches of the mountain!”

“Gold is nothing to an orc,” came Galadriel’s voice. She stood, her dress and her hands smeared in blood. The grey-bearded man cradled the wounded boy’s head in his lap, while Bard’s daughter bandaged his leg. The boy’s eyes were open, wide and glassy in his pale face.

“The mountain must hold,” said Galadriel, with absolute finality.

“You hold it then!” Alfrid retorted.

Galadriel looked at him rather as if he were a stain on the floor that had stood up and spoken.

“Meaning no disrespect,” the Master hastened to add; there was a gleam to his rheumy eyes that Bella realized, flabbergasted, was as _lustful_ as it was intimidated, of all absurd things. Forget about scolding and name-calling, Bella rather wished she could throw a nearby rock at the disgusting man’s head. “But I must consider the safety of my people,” he went on, in tones of long-suffering righteousness. “You understand, I’m sure.”

Perhaps Galadriel would throw a rock at his head; she looked like she wanted to.

“If the mountain does not hold,” she said, turning her back on the Master and instead addressing the crowd, “all will perish. Hold to your courage, and do not despair. This battle may yet be won.”

“We can repair enough for archers to stand guard on the rampart, above the field of battle, and rain death down upon those who would besiege us,” Thorin said, back straight and voice utterly assured – though close as she stood, Bella could see the way his fists were clenched so hard they trembled. “Such was the intent of those who carved this kingdom. This rubble we will haul to the main gait, and wall off the door.”

Bella realized she’d been holding her breath when the air fell from her lungs in a rush. She had not meant to make any so revealing sound, but better to show relief than the doubt that had come before it.

Hope was not lost. In fact, they might actually be better off than they would have been – not that it would help matters to point that out, of course.

“Wall us in!” the Master exclaimed. “Penned like pigs for the slaughter!”

“We have been preparing these many days for a siege,” Thorin said slowly, failing utterly to hide his contempt – if he was even trying anymore, which Bella wasn’t sure he was.

“But a door can be opened! There was a means of escape, if –“

And at that, Thorin’s temper broke. “There has never been any means of escape!” he exploded. “Not from this mountain, not if you run back to your lake! You would flee from that door, from the main gate, onto the field of battle? Can you truly be such a fool as that?”

Bella shut her eyes. Well, there went the Lakemen, then.

“Well – I never!” the Master sputtered.

“How dare you!” Alfrid exclaimed, drawing himself up to his full height. “Trumped-up little beggar of a king, you are! How dare you speak to -”

He went silent at the hissing sound of a blade drawn free of its sheath; there was Bifur, on the other side of the room, his expression murderous. Gloin had his ax in hand. Balin turned away from the wall, and Nori – who Bella had not even realized was there – appeared from behind the rock pile.

“Careful,” Nori said.

“Very careful,” said Ori, who had not moved since he entered the room, and was thus at the Master’s back – and for all that Ori might be the least intimidating person Bella had ever met, the Master still spooked and spun in a tangle of robes.

“We are _leaving!_ ” the Master proclaimed, and waved at the gathered men. “And we’re taking what’s ours with us! Go, get the – the food and things! And gold! We’ll be taking what we’re owed!”

“You will stay, if you wish to live,” Galadriel said, her voice deep and cold and rich with power, reaching to the far corners of the hall.

To which Alfrid said, “Are you threatening our liege?”

“He’s no king,” Bard answered, quietly. Resigned.

“No one asked you,” Alfrid snapped.

But Bard didn’t answer Alfrid. He straightened his spine, pointed to the Master, and called out loudly, “He is no king, no lord! No man worth following! You all know what he is!”

“I say -” the Master tried to interrupt.

“What hold has he over you now?” Bard asked. “Things have changed! He no long holds our livelihoods in his fat purse, and if you follow him now, you go to your doom!” He drew in a deep breath. “I, Bard, Lord of Dale, say we honor our word to the dwarves and hold!”

“This – this _bargeman_ knows nothing!” the Master retorted.

“And how may battles have you fought?” Bard demanded. He allowed the Master no chance to answer – not that any coherent answer seemed to be forecoming – and turned back to his fellow Lakemen. “Who here knows anything of warfare? He’s right – not I. Not any of us. We’re fishermen. But he does.” He pointed at Thorin. Then, at Galadriel. “And her. And I would heed their counsel, rather than assume an army of orcs can be turned aside as easily as a band of thieves!”

There were nods and murmurs of agreement, but just as many scowled, and looked doubtful.

“Well,” the Master blustered, “I suppose if you want trust dwarves and elves to have your welfare in mind, over one of your own, I can’t stop you. Make this dragon-fouled ruin your tomb! But the town guard will be returning to the Lake, and our weapons and provisions will be going with us!” Then, shaking a finger again at Thorin, “And mind you don’t try to stop us, or – or there will be consequences!”

“Go, then!” Thorin flung a dismissive hand toward the nearest archway. “I will waste no more time on you.”

“Nor I on you!” the Master retorted, with all the grace of a petulant tween. With that he turned and left, shoving Ori out of the way as he went – at which Ori stepped on his trailing robes. The Master stumbled, but did not stop.

“You’ll all be sorry!” Alfrid shouted, before hurrying after.

There was a moment in which the very room seemed to hold its breath; then the men began to leave. Just one at first, storming out and refusing to look Bard in the eye. Then another, dragging two young sons behind him, and more followed.

“You go to your deaths!” Bard cried, but they didn’t heed him. One or two muttered apologies as they went, a few hesitated, but none turned around.

“Let them go,” Thorin said. “We have no need of cowards.”

But they did, and they all knew it. They had need of every last able body, and more besides – and by the time the exodus had slowed to a stop, less than half remained.

Not every man in the mountain was there in that room, Bella tried to reassure herself. They were a fraction of a fraction. But word would spread, and what then?

“We are with you, Lord Bard, King Thorin!” called out a voice from among those who had stayed. “The mountain will hold!”

“The mountain will hold!” Thorin called back.

_“What is happening here?”_

Bella gasped at this new voice, and spun toward the sound.

There in the entranceway, barefoot and bruised and wearing only a long shirt, was Gandalf.

^*^*^*^

“You’ve been busy,” Gandalf observed, tapping Bella’s betrothal bead with one finger, making it swing before her eyes. Thorin stood at her side.

“Hush,” Galadriel ordered, poking at a cut above Gandalf’s eye. She had swept the four of them, quite regally, into the nearest room with a door - and none too soon, as Gandalf had all but collapsed the moment the door was shut. It really wouldn’t have done to have their wizard faint in front of those men who still had some confidence left in them. He now sat on the floor of what looked to have once been a coat closet, knees drawn up to his chest and very much on his dignity, while Galadriel examined his healing wounds.

“A hobbit queen,” he said. “Who would have thought?”

“I would,” Thorin answered, voice dry as parchment, but a little bit amused, too.

“Clearly,” Gandalf acknowledged. “And I must say, it’s one of the most sensible things you’ve done yet, Thorin Oakenshield.”

“Very wise,” Galadriel agreed, in the sort of very calm voice is that is not actually calm at all, “to seek the aid and counsel of another.”

Gandalf grimaced. “You’d have done the same,” he retorted, “in my place.”

“Would I?” Galadriel asked, and Gandalf’s scowl deepened.

“There was no alternative,” he insisted, looking indignant and abashed in equal measure.

“You did what you felt you must,” Galadriel answered, in the same glacial tone, “as you ever do.”

“I did send Radagast,” Gandalf muttered.

Galadriel said nothing, which Bella thought – having met Radagast – was all the reply that deserved.

“How do you feel?” Bella asked.

“How I feel is of no consequence,” Gandalf said, “What preparations have been made for the mountain’s defense?”

“We have food enough for a month, and clear water still flows in the deeps,” Thorin said, while Galadriel prodded at something behind Gandalf’s ear in a way that made him wince. “More swords and axes than men or dwarves to wield them, and no lack of armor, though it fits the men ill. Far fewer arrows than I would like, but we work to remedy that. The walls are –“ He paused. “As you saw. We do what we can to fortify them. What can you tell us of the force Azog brings against us?”

“Azog – only Azog? Gandalf asked, pulling away from Galadriel’s hands to turn toward her. “He is vanquished?” He sounded disbelieving.

“He is lesser than he was,” Galadriel answered him, and for just one moment, looked haunted and afraid.

“My lady,” Gandalf murmured, and reached for her; she took his hand and held it, drew in a single unsteady breath – and then seemed herself again.

“But not defeated,” Galadriel concluded. “Whether he would come here, himself – it would be unlike him, even were he not diminished.”

“Who?” Thorin demanded. “What new enemy is this?”

Gandalf sighed. “Not a new enemy at all, I’m afraid.”

^*^*^*^

It was judged that it would be better if the war council came to Gandalf, rather than moving Gandalf to a room more suited to a war council, despite his objections. He was still none too steady on his feet, and the fewer people saw how weak he remained, the better. An unconscious wizard was one thing; one stumbling about in spite of his wounds was another, and spoke to rather more desperation.

And so, an hour later, there were thirteen dwarves, six ravens, two elves, a hobbit, and Bard, all crammed into that same closet.

“This is bloody ridiculous,” Dwalin grumbled, standing wedged into a corner with a raven on each shoulder.

“I happen to agree,” Gandalf answered, “but as it seems neither you nor I are in charge, here, we will have to make do.”

And thus began the council.

It lasted well into the night, its members coming and going, fetching food and drink as it was needed. At a few hours in, the pipe-smoke was so thick in the room that Bella’s eyes were stinging, Tauriel was struggling not to cough constantly, and several of the ravens were looking distinctly dizzy. A ban was thereafter placed on pipes – which made neither Gandalf nor Dwalin any happier, and the two of them ended up shoulder to shoulder in aggravated solidarity for the rest of the evening. Beyond that, there was astonishingly little discord; Thorin did not raise his voice to Galadriel even once. Tauriel kept silent until she looked as though she might burst from it, before finally blurting out her thoughts on the placement of archers, which even Dwalin grudgingly admitted were sensible. Ori was able to sketch a rough facsimile of their enemy’s weapons and armor from Gandalf’s description of it, which allowed for the planning of how such might be best undermined. Grac had several ideas in that regard, some of which made Bella wince; she did not want to be squeamish, but talk of ripping off fingers and gouging out eyes turned her stomach. The dwarves, however, seemed quite impressed. Then Balin shared his thoughts on the repair of the ramparts – and on and on it went.

Bella’s eyes had been sliding closed for the better part of an hour when Thorin finally called, “Enough, we are weary, and talking in circles. We know our tasks for tomorrow, and will accomplish no more this night.”

“We would all do well to rest,” Galadriel said, “and clear our thoughts.”

At which Thorin merely gave a small nod of agreement.

Bella could not begin to guess what had changed between them – what Galadriel had told him that had so troubled him, and now made him gracious. She was glad of the result, whatever had happened - and she also could have throttled the pair of them for how little fuss they made of it, as if they had always been in accord. And that really wasn’t logical at all, but it was how she felt.

Neither Gandalf nor Galadriel had spoken a word of Sauron’s return; that knowledge remained with those two, Thorin, and herself. Gandalf had judged that wisest.

Why they were letting the wizard who had thought he could take on Sauron alone judge what was wise, Bella wasn’t sure, but Thorin had agreed, and Galadriel had given no objection. That was, she supposed, another piece of what it meant to rule – having to keep horrible secrets, to spare others the dread of them. She understood, but it felt like lying.

The group dispersed slowly, full of creaking joints and yawns and unsteady footsteps. If she didn’t know better, Bella might have thought they were all drunk. She kissed Thorin goodnight, just quickly and chastely – and then, because it had been a long and overwhelming day with just the one bright spot in it, said, “You can give my handkerchiefs back tomorrow,” and watched him turn red. For at least that one moment, he was not thinking of death and doom. That wasn’t much, but it was something.


	24. Made and Chosen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER SPECIFIC WARNINGS: Lots of civilian death and injury, here. None of it is graphic (though it will be next chapter), but expect no punches to be pulled from here on out.

^*^*^*^

The fifth day since Gandalf’s arrival to Erebor saw him up on his feet and once more clad in his customary robes. What had become of his staff, Bella did not know and did not ask. He moved more slowly and with greater caution than she had ever seen from him before, but he made his way around the mountain, often at Thorin’s side. In the evening they all met again in council – this time in a room intended for the purpose, with a large, round table and a functioning chimney.

^*^*^*^

On the sixth day, with the rampart only half repaired, they ran out of the last of their stone-healing powders. They began scavenging what wood they could find within the mountain that was not brittle with rot. Bella winced to see fine tables and beautifully carved beds hacked apart to make scaffolding and ladders, but needs must.

The boy who had fallen from the wall died in the night. He was enshrouded and laid to rest beside the old bones of hundreds of long-dead dwarves, and three more families left for the Lake.

^*^*^*^

On the seventh day, great plumes of smoke could be seen rising from the forest to the southwest.

“Three days overland,” Dwalin said, staring hard into the distance from the partially-repaired rampart. “Less than one if they take the river.”

“They are too large a force for that,” Gandalf answered. “No, they will continue over land, across the river and around the lake. They will use the ruins of Dale for cover.”

“Three days,” Thorin echoed. Around and behind them the men worked, sawing and hammering, filling the air with dust. He was afraid, Bella could see that, and it made her flat-out terrified – but there were many nearby to hear him, and what he said was, “More than time enough. We will be ready for them.”

Dwalin gave him a hard look, before nodding in agreement. “Aye, we’ll have a dozen arrows for everyone of the bastards, by then.”

“More,” Thorin said, with a touch of dark humor, “if Kíli’s temper doesn’t improve.”

“Twice that, then,” Dwalin agreed with a chuckle.

Kíli had not been pleased at all to be told he would be climbing no ladders as of yet. His leg was near to healed, but ‘near’ and ‘healed’ were not the same thing, and they could not afford to lose his skill with a bow before the fight even began.

Nor had anyone forgotten the poor boy who fell; dwarves had thicker skulls, but it was a long way to the floor.

Tauriel stood perched on the balustrade itself, her eyes fixed on the forest. She had been there before them, and had not acknowledged their presence at all.

The rest of them moved to leave, to get out of the way of the repairs, but Thorin paused. “You are needed below,” he said to Tauriel.

She flinched at his words, but bowed her head. “Yes, my king.”

She jumped down from the ledge, and still Thorin stood there, watching her, a look on his face as if he warred within himself. “You will have your vengeance,” he finally said.

The words were terse and clearly grudging, but they raised Tauriel’s eyes from the ground and put a look of surprised gratitude on her face. “Yes, my king,” she repeated, with more strength.

Thorin gave a curt nod, and descended the ladder.

^*^*^*^

Tauriel was absent from the room she and Bella shared more and more, even into the small hours of the night. Bella had a good idea why that was, but felt it was really not her place to intervene. They were cordial enough, but she was not the elf’s mother, nor even a close enough friend that her concern would be anything other than intrusive. And besides that, who knew how long any of them had, with the battle looming?

So she did not wait up, not intentionally – but it was harder and harder to sleep. Bella was thus still awake, attempting to read a moldy Dwarven tome by the fitful light of a single candle, when Tauriel returned.

“My queen,” she murmured in greeting.

Bella bit her tongue on the urge to tell the elf to stop that; better she be too formal in private than too familiar in public, for her own sake. She’d be calling Bella aunt soon enough anyway.

Aunt, to a six-hundred-year-old elf.

Bella gave up and closed her book while Tauriel shucked boots and knives and leather armor. The elf vanished a moment into the privy, and Bella stared up at the strange shadows that flickered across the ceiling. Veins of gold ran through the stone like seams of fire, turned molten in the candlelight. Tauriel re-emerged, twisting her hair into a knot at the top of her head as she walked.

“Do you ever wonder,” Bella said, “about orcs? About why they are as they are, I mean.”

Tauriel paused – froze like a spooked deer, really. “Morgoth made them so.”

“Yes, yes,” Bella said, and waved that away. “I just wonder . . how it holds, I guess. They crave bloodshed and cruelty the way decent folk crave music or a good meal, I can wrap my mind around that much, but how do you just . . . live, that way? Build houses, sew clothes, raise little orc-faunts. Someone must forge their weapons, and tan their leathers, and so on and so forth.”

“They take what they need by force wherever they can, and when they are reduced to crafting for themselves, they make the least among them do these things,” Tauriel said, and sat on the edge of her bed, watching Bella uncertainly. “What you or I might consider honest labor is to them the basest of degradation.”

“Well I suppose that explains their clothes,” Bella said, twisting her nose in distaste. “And Thorin said their weapons were of poor make. But even so – I don’t suppose they’d ever farm, if they even eat green things, which probably they don’t – but if they kill for sport and without moderation, if they can’t help themselves, wouldn’t they drive all the game from a place quickly? If you slaughter everything in sight, you’re left with nothing to eat later.”

“They eat the weakest of their kin.”

“Oh,” said Bella, and grimaced. “Well.”

“They are not truly a people, not in the way of elves or dwarves or men.” Tauriel paused, flushed, and added, “Or hobbits.”

“Oh, don’t bother about it, everybody forgets about us,” Bella said. “We prefer it that way, really. But they are living creatures with speech and thought, and I just can’t make that fit together in my mind with what I know of how they behave. How can an entire race of beings be bad? Are orc children born that way, or are they taught? Could there be a good orc? Could we ever treat with them, make peace?”

“No,” said Tauriel.

“But _why?_ ” Bella asked, scowling. “There can be wicked men – hobbits, even, when they were made to be good, so why can’t there be good orcs, when they were made to be wicked?”

“It was your second question that I meant to answer,” Tauriel said. “Though it answers the last as well. There are no orc children. They are neither born nor taught.”

“But then how - where do more orcs come from?” Bella asked.

“They are made.”

Made _how_ , made of _what_ , Bella wanted to ask, but glanced across the room and saw that Tauriel had slipped into bed. She lay flat on her back with her eyes fixed on some point above her, her arms draped about her middle, and looked about as tense as someone in repose could possibly be.

Of course she didn’t want to discuss the cruelty of orcs, now of all times. Really, Bella scolded herself, what had she been thinking to raise the subject?

“Ah,” said Bella, as if that cleared up everything, though it cleared up precisely nothing. “Well, goodnight, then. Thank you. For answering my questions.”

“Of course, my queen.”

Kíli could not wed his elf soon enough, Bella thought, if only to put a stop to _that_.

She blew out the candle.

^*^*^*^

The eighth day saw the ramparts as fully repaired as they were ever likely to be, and the front gate walled shut by noon.

It was just past dusk – early now, as the northern winter closed swiftly in – when they saw the torches moving across the valley, not from the direction of the Lake or the ruins, but from the Wood.

Again they gathered on the ramparts, more of them now that there were no other tasks to provide distraction. All the dwarves were present, save Bombur, whose broken foot prevented his climbing. Kíli required the help of both his brother and his betrothed, but would not be left below, and none had the heart to argue the point anymore. Bard climbed up with a few of the men whom he had appointed his generals. Then came Gandalf, and lastly Galadriel. The ravens perched here and there along the parapet. All looked out over the valley at those bobbing points of light.

“That’s not thousands,” Bard said.

“No,” Gandalf agreed slowly, squinting into the deepening shadow. “It is not.” He turned and gave Galadriel a sharp look, but she met his eyes with inscrutable serenity. “Master Raven,” Gandalf said,“What can your eyes see?”

“Better closer,” said Gräc, and launched himself into the air.

Bella fisted her hands in her skirts. “They could shoot him down. They can see better than he can in the dark.”

“He is not a child,” Thorin said, though he pried one of her hands free and held it. “And this is a peril none can avoid.”

But Gräc flew back not five minutes later, unharmed, ruffling his feathers as he landed. “Not orcs! Elves!”

Gandalf sighed. “I feared as much.”

“Feared?” Thorin said, and looked from Gräc to Galadriel, his voice tense with warring hope and disbelief. “The armies of Lothlórien, they have outpaced the orcs?”

“Not armies,” Gräc corrected, and hopped from foot to foot, and snapped his beak. “No weapons. Some carry others. Some small. Smell like blood and fire. Smell like fear.”

“Refugees of the Woodland Realm,” Gandalf pronounced grimly. Tauriel went utterly still.

Thorin jerked as if he’d been struck, and spun to look back out into the dark.

“Will you aid them, Thorin Oakenshield?” Galadriel asked.

“We cannot open the front gate,” he answered, without turning. “We cannot undo the wall there.”

Bella’s heart pounded and her stomach lurched in dread when he said no more, though all eyes were on him, and every breath held. Kíli looked up at Tauriel, then back at Thorin, and seemed on the verge of begging. Fíli moved to stand at his brother’s back.

“They will have nothing,” Thorin said, to no one and everyone, his eyes still fixed on the distant torches. “No more than the clothes on their backs. How can we feed so many, with half our provisions gone?”

She refused to believe that he would turn them aside. He just couldn’t.

“And medicine for the wounded – we have little enough of these things.”

But if he could? If he _did?_

She would love him still, thought she might love him no matter what he did, but she would never forgive herself for it.

But then Thorin drew in a great and shuddering breath, and turned, and shouted down to the men below, “Rope! We need rope tied into ladders – the nets, bring the nets! And water and bandages!”

Bella exhaled, and Thorin’s hand tightened on hers; she squeezed back.

Bard nodded, approving, and clapped a hand on Thorin’s shoulder before he climbed down to help. Thorin, though, looked to Galadriel, who studied him in turn.

“Do you seek to repay your debt, King under the Mountain?” she asked.

“No,” Thorin answered, in a voice as low and harsh as the sound of something tearing. He hadn’t known what he would do either, Bella realized, until he’d done it. “I seek to do as a king should.”

Galadriel nodded, and when Thorin had turned his gaze elsewhere, smiled just a little – and that smile, too, made Bella think of frayed and broken things.

^*^*^*^

Thranduil had received the great eagle Gwaihir’s warning, and had responded by shutting the gates of his hall and barring them. Any who would not to leave their homes for the safety of the citadel (or who word had not reached in time – a tale Bella heard repeatedly) were left to their own defense. A handful of the guard had remained outside the walls to aid them, defying their king’s orders – of their number, two lived to reach Erebor. They said that the palace held, or had the day before, but the Greenwood was lost, and the orcs’ numbers were very little diminished for it.

They reported also that Gwaihir had rested but a day in the Woodland realm, before he had flown away to the west, toward his own lands and people.

“He will return, with others of his kind,” Gandalf insisted. “He knows what is at stake, and unlike some, has the sense to do something about it.”

Tauriel leant her hands to Galadriel and Óin to aid in the tending of wounds. She did not weep when she learned the names of the fallen, but there was a brittleness in all her movements, a tremor to her hands. Many of the refugees greeted her by name, and Tauriel returned their embraces, but her eyes remained distant, as though she moved half in a dream. She was not alone in that; while there were tears enough, more than one elven face was just emotionless and stunned.

Bella thought about someone bringing her news that the Shire had been all but destroyed, as she found the elves places to settle, brought them blankets and broth. She tried to imagine how she might feel if these were her friends and neighbors, the frightened children clinging to their mothers’ hands her little cousins.

She couldn’t; her mind recoiled.

Thorin found her in the ice-packed storeroom some hours later, where she was making a vain and exhausted effort to figure how long the meat and fish might last them now. It would have to be rationed very, very carefully, even once the battle was done – after that the winter would come.

“They remember little of use about the orcish host,” he told her, and gathered her freezing hands between his own. “Only chaos and butchery.”

“They’re mostly hunters and craftspeople, simple folk,” Bella said. “Bad as the forest had gotten, spiders and all, they’d never seen anything like this.”

“Nor have you,” he reminded her,

She sighed. “No, I suppose I haven’t.”

“I had not seen an elvish child since before the dragon came,” Thorin said. “They are –“ He stopped.

“They’re what?” Bella asked.

“They look like Dís,” Thorin said. “Odd as they are, tall and pale and thin as twigs . . . I look at any one of them, and I see her, how white her eyes were with her face all covered in ash.”

^*^*^*^

Sentries were posted on the ramparts and the ravens flew constant patrols. The orcs could not be far behind the fleeing elves. There was nothing left now but to wait.

On the night of the ninth day, Laketown burned.

^*^*^*^


	25. What War Is

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> . ... so um if you saw this go up for a few hours and then come down again and then go up again? You're not losing your mind, I totally thought I had copied and pasted a different version of certain parts than I had, but I hadn't, and some stuff MADE NO SENSE and APPEARED OUT OF THIN AIR as things were initially cut together. I try to avoid that. 
> 
> CHAPTER SPECIFIC WARNINGS: Violence and battles, and psychology thereof. Despite the ridiculously ostentatious title up there, I seriously doubt I've achieved sufficient realism as to be PTSD-inducing - but, just in case, there's that.  
> There's also Bella reacting to the less-than-healthy appearance of the orcs. I was made a bit uneasy by some of the artistic decisions made re: the appearance of orcs in the films, particularly in the original LoTR trilogy - there was a clear visual implication that deformity = evil. Which is rather thoughtless, to say the least. So Bella ponders a bit on why orcs freak her out but hobbits with injuries or birth defects don't. (This is also a plot point, but shhhh. You get a cookie if you can connect it to an earlier plot point.) I hope I have been more sensitive than the films, at least.

^*^*^*^

Bella stood on the ramparts in her patchwork armor and watched the orc army fill the valley like water poured into a bowl. 

In the pre-dawn gloom they were a writhing mass, incomprehensibly many of them.  More than she would have thought there were in the world.  Could there be as many dwarves, or elves or men?  She was certain there were not so many hobbits, not if you assembled every hobbit that lived.  The sheer spectacle of them, so very many bodies moving to a single purpose, would have awed her even were they not enemies, and that alone was enough dent her courage – she had begun to think herself worldly, for just a little while, there.  That seemed a very bitter joke, now. 

Bella tried to remind herself that help was coming, that they only had to hold them off for a few days – but looking out over the seething swarm of them, Bella couldn’t imagine how they’d hold them for even a few hours.

Then the orcs set to building, the logs and branches and rope they carried taking shape into siege engines and ladders.  They were crude, cruel-looking things that they built, careless in construction and brutal in intent.    

“They come a dozen yards closer,” Dwalin muttered, nodding his head at the largest of the orcs’ creations, “and we light that up like a bonfire.”  It was taking the shape of a catapult, as were two more.

“Azog is no fool,” Thorin answered.  “He knows the range of our arrows, and knows his machines can reach farther.  They will come no closer.”

“Won’t be able to aim a piece of shit like that  worth a damn, though,” Dwalin said.  “Blind drunkard could do better.  Might just fall apart the first time they’re fired, if we’re lucky, and here’s hoping they’ll roll back over a few dozen of the bastards, too.”

“If we’re lucky,” Balin agreed, but grimly. 

“Will they retreat in daylight?” Bard asked.

“They may,” Gandalf answered.  “If the sun is bright.”

But the sun had not been bright for several days, and snow still fell, though thinly.  Gandalf looked to Galadriel, then, but her gaze was fixed on the valley, and if she knew ought of what was to come, she gave no sign.

Thorin was quiet a long moment, brow furrowed in thought.  Then he turned to Dwalin, and said, “We cannot rely on the dragon’s handiwork to hold - we _must_ seal the eastern halls.  Everything east of the hall of kings, every way that opens onto those battlements.”

Dwalin opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again, scowling.  He stepped in close before he answered.  “With _what?_ ” he asked in a low voice.  “We’ve been over this - there are _roads_ that’d have to be walled off.  We’re standing –“ and he gave a rather careful stomp, “on somebody’s old table and chairs as it is.  There’s no more stone.”

“One lucky hit –“

“Aye,” Dwalin agreed.  “But there’s no stone.”

“Thorin,” Balin interjected, “it can’t be done.”

“It’s too late, you mean,” Thorin growled in answer. 

“It never could have been done,” Balin insisted.  “You know that.”

Thorin looked as if he wanted to argue, but instead squared his jaw and looked away.

“Why not post guards there?” Bard asked.  “In the Eastern Halls – sentries, to –“

“To what?” Dwalin snarled impatiently.  “Be slaughtered?  Trust me, they break through, we’ll know it.”

“It is too late for doubts,” Galadriel said, still staring out into the distance.  “If we must retreat to deeper places, and hold a narrower way until our kin reach us, so be it.  This we agreed upon, King Under the Mountain, if the outer wall should fall.”

Thorin made no reply, and his expression remained stony, but Bella thought she could feel dread radiating from him like a chill.  Yes, they had made plans for their retreat, if it came to that – but that would mean that the orcs took the outer halls, and with the defenders locked away, would be free to venture inward as deep as they pleased.  They would then have the advantage of walls and tunnels and narrow ways to hold against the elves.  She did not know what odds the elves would have, then, in retaking the mountain from a force equal in numbers to their own – though if they who held it now, few as they were, had some chance of keeping it?  She could make a guess.

“What I’m -”  Bella stopped, and swallowed, her tongue too dry and her throat too tight to form the words.  “What I’m hearing is that – that something really must be done about those catapults.”

She had everyone’s attention, then – mostly for the stupidity of such an obvious statement, to judge by the looks on their faces, but that couldn’t be helped.

“Aye,” Dwalin said slowly, “If you’ve got a thought, let’s hear it.”  He did not sound especially hopeful. 

“My thought is that I go set them on fire,” Bella said, and very determinedly ignored her own shaking.

^*^*^*^

“I hate this,” Kili said.

“It is war,” Tauriel responded, while lacing her boots.  “I would be troubled if you liked it.”

“I hate that I won’t be up there with you.” He scowled in a way that said she had known well enough what he meant – which she had, but what was there to say?

“So do I,” Tauriel replied.  “And that I will not be here, with you.  I know that I can guard you best by leaving your side, but,” she conceded, “it feels wrong to me as well, to be parted from you, when either of us might fall.”

“Don’t say that,” he said.  “It’s a good plan.  Clever.  You impressed _Dwalin_ with it, and that’s basically impossible.” 

She wore the dullest of clothing that could be found to fit her, and was covered head to toe in gray stone dust and dirt.  Her hair was braided tight to her head and here and there a twig or a sprig of dead leaves had been tucked into it.  More were woven into the mud-caked, sack-cloth cloak that she draped about her shoulders.  It was heavier than she was accustomed to, and shed crumbled bits of dirt when she moved – but on the mountainside, she would be well hidden beneath it even if the enemy stood a handful of paces from her, and from the ground or the battlements below, all but invisible. 

Around her a dozen more elves likewise attired themselves, and a handful of the Lakemen also – and Ori, with his slingshot. 

“I did not expect to be given command,” Tauriel admitted quietly, as she checked that her quiver was secure.  “I will not fail our people, even if it means my own death.  Nor would you.”

“I know,” Kili said.  “You’re right.  Still hate it.”

She smiled.  “And for all of that, I love you.”

“ _Meleth nin_ ,” Kili answered.  “Did I say that right?”

“You did – _amrâlimê?_ ” 

Ori looked up with wide, shocked eyes, at that – though she thought that of all the dwarves, he was probably the one likely to be least offended at her learning their tongue.  His look was one of astonishment, not of outrage, and that was something.

“Perfect,” said Kili, with a lopsided smile. 

“ _Hervenn nin_ ,” Tauriel replied – perhaps, in some part, so as to see the wood elves’ faces become a mirror of Ori’s expression.  There was a piece of her that began to enjoy being a cause of astonishment and disbelief, and she felt the need to clutch at every scrap of joy she could find in this moment. 

“What’s that?”

“Guess.”

Kili eyed her intently, then responded, “ _Yusthê._ ”

Which sent Ori into a coughing fit, and so was probably correct.  Kili grinned, just for a moment before sobering.  “Come back.”

“Be waiting,” she answered.

“I will,” he promised.

^*^*^*^

Bella’s plan was met with nigh-universal disapproval and dismay, and as most of the company had gathered up on the wall by that point, that meant quite a few voices raised in opposition. 

Gandalf protested most of all. 

Gandalf, who was the reason she was there in the first place!  Gandalf, daring to argue that Nori or one of the elvish woodsmen should be given the task and her ring to do it, while she stayed in safety!  Gandalf, who once scolded her that the world was not in her books and maps, exchanging speaking looks with Galadriel and muttering about mistrusting magic whose maker was unknown!

And Galadriel - there was a moment when Bella did not like the way Galadriel was looking at her ring at all.  It was too covetous and too knowing, that look, though just what it was that she knew, Bella could not have said.  But it was brief, less than a handful of heartbeats, and when it passed the elven lady looked oddly shaken.  From there Galadriel became her lone ally; the ring was Bella’s, she said, and if Bella did not wish to part with it, then it was her right alone to wield it. 

Balin thought she’d fail, and be killed, and that none of them would be able to live with themselves thereafter.  Dwalin just told her she was out of her damn mind, folded his arms, and from there seemed determined to glower her into submission.  Bofur proclaimed that he didn’t like it, didn’t like it at all.  Bombur wrung his hands, Bifur contributed an animated rant whose intent was clear enough even if she couldn’t understand a word, and Fili volunteered to take her place (at which Dwalin swatted him in the ear and reminded him he was the heir).  Gloin, of all people, was brought near to tears, and stormed off muttering about how it wasn’t right.  She didn’t even want to know how Dori might have reacted, but he and Nori were off fussing over Ori, and Oin was busy preparing for the treatment of the inevitable wounded. 

Even Bard and Grac, who barely knew her, tried to dissuade her.

But not Thorin. 

Thorin stayed silent through all of the shouting, until finally he raised his voice above all of them and called enough. 

They quieted, and Bella turned to him, her chin up and her blood pounding with righteous purpose.  She met his gaze ready to stand her ground at any cost – she was the smallest and quietest of them, it was _her_ ring, and it simply had to be done! – and instead felt all her fury draining away.

What she saw in his face was admiration – a fierce, fearful, resigned sort of admiration, but acceptance all the same.  He was on her side.

Thorin took her face in his hands and leaned down to bring their foreheads together, so gently, so very gently.  She squared her shoulders and met his eyes and let her breath fall from her lips in a great, shaking sigh. 

Two breaths, three, four.

He released her, and said only, “Go.” 

^*^*^*^

They went out through the hidden door – Tauriel and her company, who climbed up along the mountainside, and Bella, who went down.

Balin had given her a box of matches and several small stone jugs, tied to a belt. The stuff that sloshed in those jugs was, as Bella understood it, a bit like lamp oil - in the same way that a flood was a bit like a spilled bucket. It would make even wet wood burn, he promised. He'd uncorked one just to let her smell it, to be sure it wouldn't make her faint - or rather, she suspected, hoping that she would faint, and give up her plan. But it had only made her eyes water a little.

Before Bella had descended a dozen paces, there was a woosh of wings and a rush of air against her face, and then a weight on her shoulder.  She turned her head to see Grac’s betrothed perched there, one round, black eye inches from her own.

“Hunt with you,” the raven said.

Bella opened her mouth to object – there were thousands of orcs out there, with bows, and any one of them could shoot a raven right out of the sky!  But that sounded very much like all the arguments she’d just heard.

“Cry warning, if orcs hunt you.”   

It wasn’t a bad idea, really.

“You need a name,” Bella blurted out.  “That is, I don’t mean to say you _ought_ to have one, as if it’s better to have a name – I do wish I could speak you as another raven would, but I can’t, and I need to call you something.” 

“Not time now,” the raven answered, in an impatient tone not dissimilar to Bella’s own.

Bella grimaced.  “You’re right, of course it’s not the time for it – is there a ceremony to it, to naming, for your people?  And it’s not the time to be asking about that, either.”  She sighed.  “Right then.”  Another thought entered her mind.  “How will you know where I am, once I’ve put on my ring?  I’ll be as invisible to you as to the orcs.”

“See –“  The raven stopped, clacking her beak together and ruffling her feathers in evident frustration.  “Need more _words_.  See you like mouse in grass.  Grass moves.” 

“I will be trying very hard not to move any orcs.”

“Mouse tries too,” said the raven, and launched into the air.

^*^*^*^

The raven was right; it was a crush like the most horrid party ever to be held, and there was no way she could move among the orcs without jostling and squeezing and shoving her way through. If there had been even slightly more order to their lines, she would have been discovered in an instant. As it was, she merely left a trail of angry voices and thudding blows behind her, as they blamed each other. Sometimes there were shrieks, howls, wet tearing sounds. They turned on each other without thought.

 The question she'd asked Tauriel a few nights past came back to her; how could any creature possibly live like this? And the stench of them; Bella was desperately afraid that she would gag, and retch, and give herself away. It was as if they rotted where they stood – and they looked no better. Azog suddenly seemed positively delightful in appearance; petrifying in altogether different ways, to be sure, but less nauseatingly _wrong_ than seemed to be the norm among orcs.

 It wasn't their twisted limbs or misshapen faces; such things had never horrified her before, and there were scars aplenty to be seen in the Shire, of course – not battle scars, perhaps, but farming was rough work sometimes. And there were children born already scarred; it happened, and it was a little sad, but life went on and accommodations were made and they were no less hobbits for lacking some of the parts hobbits usually had. Or having a few more. One of her little cousins had a tiny sixth finger on each hand, and it was just rather endearing.

 What made an orc so different?

 All she could think, over and over until she could hear a high whine in her ears and her vision swam a bit, was that she walked among corpses. That it was malice alone that kept them upright, no spark of life as animated proper creatures but just hate, a miasma of evil that oozed into the air around them. She could feel it on her skin, hear it like a whisper in her ear, like -

Like Mirkwood.

 For a moment she had the mad thought that she was still leaning up against that tree in the rotting woods, that that last seemingly endless night had not in fact ended, that everything she thought had happened since was only a fevered dream. What she felt was wakefulness creeping up on her, the forest's wrongness making itself known as she climbed out of sleep. The gurgling, panting breaths all around her were only the fitful wind, the damp on her flesh not the heat and sweat of many bodies but mist rising out of the putrid earth. They were lost, still lost, would never find their way -

 A raven's caw cut through her thoughts.

 There had been no birds in the Mirkwood - where she was not.

 Bella blinked, dazed, and squinted up at the sky. The scrap of it she could see between pikes and helms and ragged banners was blindingly white. Snow drifted down – and how impossible did that seem, when Bella felt as if she were roasting alive inside her armor, inside the charnel furnace that was the mass of orcs around her?

 The raven called again, circling, agitated.

 She'd stopped, Bella realized, for she knew not how long.

 Like a mouse in the grass indeed; the raven could see where she moved, had known something was wrong.

 A handful of arrows shot into the sky; they missed, and the danger was past before Bella had even managed to suck in a panicked breath. A snarling voice shouted something in black speech, and no more bows were raised. The raven flew higher, circling away.

 Bella put her head down and plowed forward. The nearest of the catapults couldn't be far now, though she'd lost sight of it as she came closer.

 What if she went right past it without knowing? She couldn't see over the heads of the much-taller orcs. She thought she'd been moving in a straight enough line - but a moment ago she'd thought she as in Mirkwood.

 It was no use to think on it, Bella told herself, and swallowed and swallowed and swallowed against the bile rising in her throat. Move forward; that was all there was to do.

 There were more orders shouted, and suddenly every orc was stomping its feet and banging its breastplate and roaring. Her ears rang, until the noise turned into something that was less loud than it was heavy, pressing in on her from all sides, crushing.

 It stopped; the air fell from Bella's lungs in an audible shudder. None of the orcs noticed, but now they were all _still_. No shoving and fighting. She didn't know what was happening, but she froze in place and held her breath, sure that if she pushed her way through now they'd know it wasn't one of their fellows jostling them.

 “Oakenshield!”called Azog's voice, over the sudden stillness of the valley.

 “Defiler!” That was Thorin's voice, and he sounded a thousand miles away.

 Bella curled oh-so-carefully down onto her knees and crawled between the orcs' feet.

 Her sword clinked against her armor. The links of the chain mail rustled and chimed like a hundred tiny bells. The liquid fire in its jugs sloshed. Her sides just brushed an orc's legs, and she could suck her breath in no tighter, make herself no smaller.

 “Come out of your hole, Dwarvish rat!” Azog taunted, his Westron stilted and slow, but comprehensible enough.

 The orcs started stomping and roaring again, and Bella had to snatch an outstretch hand back before it was crushed beneath an orc's boot.

 What had she been thinking? She was going to die here, trampled and crushed and invisible, and they would never even find her body.

 “You will break upon these walls!” Thorin shouted back. “Flee now, or meet your death!”

 Azog laughed. Bella crept forward, counting her progress in orcish feet. Some of them had marched to battle barefoot as hobbits. Some of their toes were clawed.

 One had cloven feet like a pig, though he had clearly not been born so; there were mangled toes on each half tied together with strips of leather that had cut into the skin and scabbed in place, and the gash down the middle of each foot was a mass of gnarled scar. On the left foot, she could see the jagged end of a piece of bone poking through.

 She was going to be ill. She could taste it on the back of her tongue.

 Azog's voice rang out again, but this time in black speech, and there was movement in front of her.

 There was the creaking of wood.

 The catapult. The Eastern-most catapult, the one they most desperately needed to stop, and it couldn't be more than half a dozen paces from her – if only she could stand and walk, she'd be there.

 And then, miracle of miracles, the orcs parted around her. A handful of them, brawny and more whole-looking than most, were snarling and pushing the foot soldiers out of the way as they readied the catapult to fire.

 Fire.

 Fire took time, even Balin's magic stuff. She'd run out of that.

 The plan had been to splash it all around the base, then light it, but the orcs were already pulling down the swinging beam in the center of the thing, and they would have it ready before she'd even managed to pull the cork free.

 Well, then, time for a new plan.

 Bella drew her sword as she ran, well aware she must be leaving footprints in the muddied ground, half afraid that Sting's blue glow would overwhelm whatever power her ring possessed to keep her hidden. It was like a flame itself, so brightly did it shine.

 No orc cried out warning, but the end of the catapult's beam was drawn down as far as it would go, held there by thick rope – not tied, only held, the muscled arms of the orcs who held the two ends wider around than her waist. Two more orcs were hefting a huge stone toward it. It was four times the size of her, that stone, and it had taken only the misplaced grasp of a boy's hand to bring the dragon's wall on the Western battlements down.

 She had not even heartbeats left. Not enough time to be sure of cutting clean through the rope. Definitely not enough time to be sure of killing one of the rope-holding orcs, who looked bigger than bulls and twice as sturdy. Their hands might clench in death; there might be time for another orc to grab the rope. Once that boulder was in the catapult's cup, it was over; the counterweight would fall and the thing would fire itself even if she somehow managed to kill all four of them. Which she knew very well she could not.

 Bella thought of what Balin had said, of his fire-oil clinging to its users – of how she had flinched and cringed as the ravens spoke of torn fingers and plucked eyes, as Dwalin jeered about these very catapults crushing bodies beneath them. She'd hated even the thought of it. Not of killing – that she had done – but of wounding, maiming, pain caused with intent. How less than a breath ago, the sight of a purposefully mangled foot was making her sick.

  _Oh,_ thought Bella, as she flew those last two steps. She raised her sword high over her head, two-handed, like she meant to chop a log with it. _Oh, I understand now_. She wasn't sick. She wasn't disgusted. She felt no cringing empathy.

 She felt nothing.

  _This is what war is._

 She brought her sword down on the nearest orc's white-knuckled hand, across the fingers, where the bones were thin and it was sure to cut. And it did; cut three fingers and the tip of a thumb clean off.

 Black blood sprayed in her face.

 The orc howled.

 The rope ripped up into the searing white of the sky, whistling like a whip-crack.

 The counterweight fell, and the orc still clutching the other end of the rope, a dumb-struck look on his face, was struck like a croquet ball, flung back into the ranks.

 There were spooked cries and snarls and confusion all around her, and then distantly, the sound of the other two catapults firing. They hit something, rock against rock and the earth beneath her feet shaking, though Bella could not hope to see what. The orcs rushed in around her, trying to understand what had happened, trying to fix it.

 Somewhere above, there was the triumphant cry of a raven, and more ravenish voices answering from the mountainside.

 “Is that all you can do?” Thorin's voice challenged, barely audible through the din around her, but enough to make her blood catch fire in her veins. They'd hit the mountainside, just the mountainside -

 ( - but Tauriel, Ori - )

 - and he was still alive and defiant.

 And so was she.

 With shaking fingers, Bella worked the cork free of one of Balin's jugs, and began splashing it everywhere she could reach.

 On the wood.

 On the dry grass crushed beneath their feet.

 On the orcs.

 She felt light-headed and euphoric and a bit like someone else was doing these things. They would burn. They would burn _alive_. She didn't want to burn anyone alive, not even an orc.

 She didn't _care._

 She'd light them all up like a midsummer bonfire if she could. Thorin was alive, and she was alive, and Bofur and Balin and all the wide-eyed elvish children and Fili and Kili. They were alive. The orcs were just walking corpses.

 They'd managed to get the rope back around the beam by the time Bella's jug was empty. It didn't seem like much; the wood had soaked it up, and the ground, too.

 Her fingers were no longer shaking when she lit the match. She saw one of the orcs notice it as she dropped it – it must have seemed to come out of thin air - his eyes tracking the tiny, falling flame in confusion.

 She turned and ran. There was sudden heat at her back, a rush of air like a popped cork.

 Screams. The shriek and crack of green wood burning. The smell, Green Lady, the _smell_.

 From the mountain, a roar of a cheer like distant thunder. _Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu! Baruk Khazâd!_

 Azog's answer, incomprehensible in words but unmistakable in intent.

 And the orcs charged.

 


	26. The Smallest of Persons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG I FINALLY WROTE THIS. So, um, this chapter was kinda hard to figure out. Like over a year's worth of hard ( . . and then I just wrote the whole thing in one go in an afternoon, WTF brain?). Hopefully someone is still interested in this!
> 
> CHAPTER SPECIFIC WARNINGS: . . . I think I should just say ALL OF THE THINGS. It's a (brief) siege. With orcs. Expect ugly.  
> To be more specific, graphic violence, non-graphic rape (not of a named character), cannibalism, animal death (well, sort of - definitely death, sort-of on the animal part). Injury, illness, existential dread, and a partridge in a pear tree. Wow can things only go up from here.

^*^*^*^

Bella had read of great battles and sieges. She had never expected to be in one – daydreamed of it, sometimes, of peril and heroism, but those dreams took her far from the Shire, and she'd never actually expected to leave.

Even now, having come all this way, fought before, killed before, she felt laughably ill prepared for the reality of it.

The first charge was chaos, roaring voices and the battering of bodies running past her. She lost her footing, fell, scrambled back up again before she was trampled, over and over again. She slashed with her sword, but she couldn't say that she fought – knew that it bit into flesh only when it caught and was nearly pulled from her hands. Invisible as she was, no one swung back at her. No bodies fell at her feet, either, though there were grunts and squeals and the splatter of black blood; maybe they fell somewhere behind her, in front of her, a few steps forward. She only knew which way _was_ forward, where the mountain lay, because that had to be the way that they were all running.

There was one thought in her head, and it was _don't fall, don't fall, don't fall._

And when she did, _get up, get up now, now now nownownow!_

There was a flash of light. Screams. The earth shook. Crash of rock on rock, whistle of arrows, thunk of arrows into the earth right at her feet, _they were going to shoot her_ , that might be _Kili_ , or Tauriel, shooting at her, not that they'd know. An echoing voice – Gandalf? Galadriel? It was just power, a rush of it out over the plain that left her dazed, made her want to wail. Around her orcs stumbled, fell to their knees.

She could see; she could move. Bella _ran._

Away from the mountain; was she running away? She had to get out of the crush, _had_ to, or she'd just die, not die fighting but just die crushed and invisible, and what was the point of that?

More arrows, more precise, sinking into dazed eyes and exposed throats. The elves, that had to be the elves, only they could see so far.

Then the ravens came in a flurry, snatching at helmets and spears, talons sinking into faces. They'd be seeking out the commanders, Bella remembered – that had been their plan.

What a hysterical, ridiculous, absurd thought – _plan_ this? There was no plan here, it was madness, utter madness.

But the orcs were regaining their senses and lurching unsteadily back to their feet, all confused fear and animal rage – they could get worse, who would have thought they could get worse? - and Bella did have a sword in her hand.

She wasn't running away.

She slashed at the nearest throat. At hands, at faces, at any bit of soft flesh she could see. They were swinging back now, but like clumsy drunks, slow where she was fast, blind to her where her sight seemed sharpened, honed like a blade. There, there was a gap in its armor, there was a cudgel swung at her feet, and it wasn't really like _seeing_ or _thinking_ at all.

And then she was out of it. She'd kept running; Bella hadn't quite realized she'd still been running, but suddenly there were no more orcs in front of her, just the flat plain. Earth churned to mud and bodies and shapes that weren't quite bodies, still twitching. No arrows or raven's claws had caught these, so far from the mountainside; the dead and dying here had been trampled by their own and left behind.

A great plume of smoke still rose behind the ruins of Dale, from what had been Laketown.

Bella turned and looked back at the battle.

Orcs swarmed the mountainside.

She was shaking. Her armor was very heavy, and she was sweating inside it, as wet as if she'd fallen in the lake.

Some of that was probably blood seeping in through the mail. Her sword was dripping with it, her hands coated. Her left side ached rather sharply.

Another great flash from the ramparts, and the orcs near it fell away like ash. The aftershock of it rippled down across the valley, stung Bella's eyes and whipped loose tendrils of hair around her face.

Her side _hurt._ There was a sickening stab every time she drew in a breath.

Broken ribs, some calm corner of her mind supplied. And there was a stinging something wrong with one of her legs. She glanced down, and, oh – so a blade had caught her after all. Not badly, she thought – or maybe it was just that her ribs hurt so much _worse_. But it was only bleeding a little, one slow trickle, several agonizing breaths between drops.

What was she meant to do now?

Rejoin the battle, likely; that was what she ought to do, wasn't it? What Thorin would do. Was _doing_.

But Thorin was defending the mountain, and Bella would just be hacking away at stragglers, _and it bloody hurt to breathe._

Gandalf's voice rang across the valley in a way that made her head go fuzzy and ringing; it was worse for the orcs, much worse, if the way some of them just toppled right over was any indication.

 _I'm going to topple over,_ Bella thought, and staggered back – and once the first step was taken the next and the next seemed to take themselves, until she'd found a large rock and sunk down to the ground on the side of it that put it between her and the orcs. She looked at her leg and knew that she really needed to do something about that, but there was nothing to do; she had a tiny flask of water at her hip that she really needed to save for drinking, and no bandages. She could only hope that the blade that got her hadn't been poisoned.

She uncorked her flask and took a small sip; the inside of her cheek stung. She must have bitten it, one of those times that she fell.

The plan had been for her to make her way back up the mountain, once she'd finished her sabotage – to join Tauriel and her troop.

How exactly had she thought that was going to work? Balin may have had a point.

And Green Lady but breathing really, _really_ hurt.

What was one meant to do for broken ribs? Rest, mostly, she thought. Not lift heavy things. Not laugh – well, _that_ was no problem, except now it was, because she was giggling at the thought that she shouldn't giggle.

Hysteria; not good, that. But rest – she could rest. Just for a moment.

^*^*^*^

The sounds changed, and it woke her. It was quiet, too quiet, but what sounds there were seemed to be approaching. Grunts and mutterings and stomping feet, and Bella forgot her ribs and her leg and leapt, flailing, to her feet.

It hurt, it hurt, it _hurt._

But there were orcs milling about her, limping here and there, some of them with their helmets under their arms. She had to scramble out of the way when one nearly sat on her.

The sun had come out, low in the west like late afternoon, and the orcs retreated into the long shadows of the ruins, where she had foolishly waited.

Out from the remains of Dale came more orcs, these older and bent and altogether even more wrong than their more war-like counterparts, with cauldrons and ladles and all the usual supplies of a camp. The soldiers peeled off bits armor, claimed patches of ground with snarling and shoving, emptied bladders and bowels right there in the middle of everything.

Her own bladder was full, but the thought of dropping her trousers surrounded by orcs was too horrifying to contemplate. Bella began to make her way toward the edge of the camp, moving carefully between them; they weren't exactly calm, she doubted they were ever calm, but there was enough space between them that they'd notice if something ran into them where they could see only empty air.

She dared a look back at the mountain; it was still, but she thought she could see the shapes of figures still standing on the ramparts. Of course there were; the orcs would not have retreated to regroup if they had been able to push ahead.

Thorin was still alive, she decided. And Fili and Kili, and Bofur, and Tauriel, and all the wide-eyed human and elvish children; they were all just fine.

It helped to keep that thought in her head, as the orcs began to prepare their supper; Tauriel had warned her, but it still made her head swim in horror when they began hauling corpses toward the cookfires. Into the pot went the limbs of their companions, and onto the spit went their torsos; fingers were little snacks to chew on raw, and heads were taken up and tossed around in sport.

This was how they treated their own.

She tried not to think of Laketown or of Mirkwood.

She could think of nothing _but_ Laketown and Mirkwood.

The edge of the camp was too far, she hurt too badly, and when the crowd had thinned enough that the danger of an accidental collision seemed remote, she just squatted behind a rock. Her fingers were half numb and unwieldy on her laces, and half a moment with her trousers at her knees left her so cold her teeth rattled. There was nothing to clean herself with; even when they were starving in Mirkwood there had been leaves.

Then came the smell of roasting meat.

It didn't smell quite right, but it didn't smell wrong enough to keep her stomach from twisting in demand. It had been the better part of a day since she'd eaten.

She could try for the mountain now, across the once-again empty plain.

She'd just pissed not a handful of paces from an orc who was chewing on the leg of one of its mates, because the thought of going one step further had been too much. Trying for the mountain in her state would be an excellent way to find herself stranded in the middle of the field when the battle recommenced. Her leg was throbbing; it was the one part of her that felt warm

The orcs were drinking something thin and dark that came from great stone jugs, and the way they passed it between them – the only companionable thing she had yet seen them do – she bet it was something like ale. Maybe something stronger.

That would do, for her leg; it would hurt like anything, but better than nothing, if infection was already setting in. She'd have to watch where they took it, when they'd had their fill – or maybe there was more in the ruins even now, saved for later? The ruins weren't as far as the mountain; still almost impossibly far, but much closer.

Toward the ruins, then, one step at a time – and a pity she hadn't thought to bring some manner of poison to dump into their pots. One step, then another, then another, and if she had to rest for breath every handful of steps, that was alright. She just had to start again, and keep starting again.

She caught sight of Azog near the gate to Dale. So he lived; she supposed it was too much to hope otherwise, with the orcs still organized as they were. Bella paused, two fires and perhaps three dozen orcs between her and the creature that was responsible for all of this – beneath Sauron, anyway, but that very thought was too much, almost incomprehensible. Here was the fleshly creature who lead this army, who had killed Thorin's father, made Thorin weep. Put that arrow in Kili's leg. Harried them and starved them and burnt them for months and miles, it may as well have been him who broke the ribs that now stabbed at her, _all of it_ , and he was _right there_.

Could she?

She inched closer, gritting her teeth and locking her knee against the wobble in her leg.

The orcs had eaten their fill in the time it took her to limp not a hundred steps, and seemed to be settling; maybe, Bella thought, they would sleep now. She had no doubt that once the sun was down, they would attack again, but a few hours rest? Perhaps _Azog_ would sleep, and if he did, well, then it would be easy.

Easy, to kill someone in their sleep.

No, not _someone_. Not someone at all. A monster. A thing.

It was harder to think that way, now that her fear was a cold, heavy thing in her gut, and the sharp-edged, desperate energy of the battle had left her.

Tauriel had said that orcs were not truly people, not like hobbits or elves or dwarves. They were not begotten and born and raised, not taught good or evil; she'd said they were _made_. Like a machine.

Made out of what, and how?

But Azog didn't sleep; he called out for something, in their guttural tongue, and what was brought out of the ruins to him, with much scurrying and ducking and bowing – and feeble struggling -

She had been an elf, Bella thought, but now she was blood-matted hair and limbs that bent at wrong angles, and Azog was grinning.

Bella looked away, and felt fear and rage wash over her skin in a cold sweat, and told herself that she couldn't do anything. She was weak, she was barely standing, and all she could do was die too. If she lived, if she could wash her wound and find some hole in a wall to rest in and regain her strength, then – maybe then -

Nothing she could do then would undo this moment, the one where Azog was laughing and she couldn't watch, and walked away.

But all there was to do was to take another step. And another. And another.

^*^*^*^

It was pitch dark in the room where the orcs had stored their meager provisions, and when Bella reached with a wildly shaking hand for one of the jugs of liquor, she brought the whole haphazard pile down. Clay splintered and its contents splattered everywhere. She slipped on the suddenly wet floor, and then the room was full of orcs and accusations and shoving. She crawled backwards away from the ensuing brawl, liquor soaking into her trousers and the ends of her sleeves. The drag of mail and the clink of her armored wrists on the stone was loud to her ears, but the orcs didn't notice.

There would be no washing the wound properly, but she took the ripped edge of her trouser leg and pressed the sodden leather into the gash. She sucked air in through her teeth, almost screaming, but out in the main space of the room an orc was getting gutted, and no one was listening to her corner.

She stayed there, dizzy with pain and growing hunger, through the sound of drums taken up again and marching feet, while the world went black and the mountainside flashed like lightning.

^*^*^*^

The next time she woke, it was to the cries of eagles, and light streaming in through the cracks in the ruined stone.

Bella gasped and stumbled to her feet, around the forgotten body of the dead orc in the middle of the floor, and pressed her face to one of those cracks.

The orcs had been camped again, in the dawn, and the eagles dove through the untidy ranks of them like ducks breaking water. Bella gave a sharp cry of triumph, before she remembered where she was – but no orcs came at the sound. They were, she supposed with vicious glee, rather busy. There were eight – no, ten – no, a dozen eagles, that Bella could see.

So few, a little voice chimed warning in the back of her mind – but it didn't matter, she told herself. Look how the orcs fell before them!

For a few glorious minutes, it seemed like the battle would be won just like that.

Then the orcs found their spears.

“No!” Bella cried out, as the first spear found a wing, and her heart lurched in her chest at the eagle's scream of pain. That bird managed a faltering glide toward the mountain, and it was beyond the orcs' reach when it crashed to the ground, wounded wing out-flung and its back heaving. Bella's own ribs sparked in shared agony. The rest of the eagles circled, higher, more cautious.

Bella couldn't tell if Gwaihir was among them; they looked much alike to her, though it shamed her to think it. It could be him with the pierced wing, fluttering and limping toward the mountainside and its meager safety, and she wouldn't know.

Whoever it was, they'd come to their aid and were suffering for it now.

Another eagle dove; there was a difference in how it used its wings now, the way it churned the air, and the orcs' spears flew wide of it. It was slower, though, and they too were able to scatter more easily. That eagle climbed, and another swooped, and another behind it; the second was able to snatch up handfuls of orcs, dropping them as it ascended.

A spear caught its side, under the wing, and this spear had a rope tied around it.

For a second it kept climbing, lifting the orcs clinging to that rope like the tail of a kite, but then it fell. The orcs were on it like ants.

Two more eagles descended, trying to defend the one who had fallen, but the orcs were just too many. One of those eagles launched back into the sky, shrieking its frustration and its grief; the other did not.

 _Do something,_ her heart and her hollow gut screamed at her, _do something!_

The remaining eagles were retreating to the mountainside.

But the orcs crept back toward the ruins, reduced in number and now wary of the open plain, but still _so many_ , and all there was for her to do was hide.

^*^*^*^

She was so hungry it was making her lightheaded, and she was nearly out of water. It was Mirkwood all over again, and she couldn't stand it. Maybe they'd catch her, maybe she'd die, maybe she _wouldn't_ die and they'd keep her like that elf and – but, well, she'd still die sooner than later, and at least then -

Oh. This was what Thorin had meant, in Laketown.

Then it would be over, and she wouldn't be terrified and guilty and starving and going mad with her own uselessness anymore.

She thought she might be running a fever; her leg was numb unless she touched it, but the lightest touch was like fire. Maybe it'd be over soon anyway, so hang it.

The orcs did sleep; not much, and not deeply, but they did. If she was quick, they never even woke. She tried not to count, because counting made it hopeless, but by the time the alarm was raised Bella had done for seventeen of them.

It actually wasn't all that upsetting, slitting sleeping throats, if she just thought about Azog's lustful grin or how long the downed eagles had thrashed or the looks on the faces of the elvish children hiding back in the mountain – if she thought on how _this_ was what they'd seen. These orcs had marched into their Shire, and done this.

What was hard was after, when she'd scrambled, one step ahead of discovery, down crumbling stairs through cracked walls until the orcs gave up on finding the assassin, and decided that if they were awake and the sun was still high in the sky, they may as well eat. The hard part was how her stomach growled and tied itself in knots, how her mouth watered, how orcish cooking had stopped smelling wrong and just smelled like _you don't have to feel like this anymore, look, it's right there, you could steal a morsel._

And maybe she might have, if she could be sure it was orc – but it might have been Lakeman, or elf, or eagle. Hungry as she was, she couldn't. Just couldn't. She'd go mad.

^*^*^*^

But then it was dark, and the fighting began again, and the dying embers of the cookfires that the orcs left behind were the only warmth, drawing her closer and closer. There was a scrap of meat left on a bone.

She got as far as reaching for it, thinking all the while _if you do this you will not be yourself anymore,_ and just not _caring,_ because she was so hungry and so sick and in so much pain.

It was faintly warm, and greasy, and pulled away from the bone with a little wet sound. Bella dropped it and gagged, and cried until she couldn't cry anymore. Then she got to her unsteady feet and stumbled up, and up, and out onto the wall of Dale, into the wind where it was even colder, and stared across the valley at the mountain.

They were still fighting, and that glowing figure on the ramparts could only be Galadriel, and there was hope still, there _was_.

^*^*^*^

On the fourth day, just shy of dawn, the call of an elvish horn cut through the air. The sound sang through her veins like her blood had been turned to light, though that may have been the fever.

^*^*^*^

Despite days of fighting, the orcs still outnumbered the armies of Lorien – but it hardly seemed to matter. Bella had never thought she could watch such slaughter with joy, but Green Lady it was beautiful. Right and just and gleaming, and then she was sobbing, and then she was curled up in a little terrified ball thinking _please let them be alive, please let them be alive, please, please, please._ It seemed likely that she'd know before noon.

^*^*^*^

It was all but over, and then the world trembled.

It was coming from the lake, Bella realized slowly, staggering to her feet and turning. Her view was obstructed by the remains of Dale's towers, but she could still see a little, and what she could see was the lake churning and sloshing over its banks in great waves.

There was something enormous rising from its depths, and in the sky above was a gathering of thunderheads like Bella had never seen, lightning flashing dark and red and wrong.

On her finger, her ring suddenly burned like a brand, and from the lake the dragon rose.

Bella pulled the ring free with a cry; fiery letters circled the band, and she could hear a dark muttering that was coming from the ring and was in her own mind all at once. Out over the water, the thing that had been Smaug spread dripping, tattered wings, and roared.

There was a figure beneath it, small in comparison, but it was wreathed in flame and standing just above the water.

 _Sauron,_ her uselessly well-read mind supplied, _could appear here and there, they said, as a figure made of fire._

She looked down at the ring in her hand.

She thought, _well then, isn't that something._

The dragon wraith launched itself into the air and over the ruins, and it really wasn't the time to be contemplating the general, improbable ridiculousness of one single piece of this having happened to her.

_"THE MOUNTAIN IS MINE, "_ said a voice that came from the dragon, and from the queasy pit in her own stomach, and rang through her bones louder than thunder.  _"THIS WORLD SHALL BE MINE."_

A voice answered, ringing too with power, _“It shall not!”_

Galadriel.

From across the valley Bella could hear the weariness in her voice, and the tremble of fury _,_ and felt sick with dread. For all its power, it was just a person's voice, not the insidious _thing_ that was the voice of Sauron. This was not the untouchable Galadriel of her storybooks; this was someone who she'd given bowls of thin soup while they all waited, the same as anyone else.

This was, perhaps, her friend - challenging the lord of all evil and the gargantuan undead beast he'd summoned.

“You shall not have this place!” Galadriel cried out. “You shall have nothing, Deceiver! Flee, now, or be unmade!”

The dragon answered in a roar and dove for the ramparts, and a wave of light rose to meet it. They crashed together with a sound like a great bell being rung. The dragon reared back and writhed, shrieking, and bits of dead flesh fell away from it; the light twisted and shuddered and struggled to hold. Overhead the sky boiled. The dragon breathed something like flame, but blue-green and sinuous and wrong, and the light faltered before surging back.

Lightning struck the mountain-top, and the dragon's tail whipped the air, and Galadriel wailed, high and wordless and full of more determined rage than any sound should ever contain.

She was holding Sauron at bay; impossible as the very thought seemed, Galadriel was doing it. But, Bella thought, only just.

If Bella was right about her ring -

Well, it wasn't as if it would matter if she was wrong, would it? Of course if she was right there was a very good chance she'd _die_ , or worse than die, but when in the last half a year hadn't the odds of that been rather better than not?

She put it on, and she thought as loudly and deliberately as she could, _Hello. I think I have something of yours._

The long-lost artifact that bound Sauron's spirit to this realm was, predictably, rather distracting.

For one terrible, eternal moment, Bella knew she had his full, undivided, utterly stunned attention. She thought this must be how a twig felt before it was tossed on the fire, or an ant seeing a descending foot.

It was less than a breath; then the dragon's roar turned to shrill screams. The sensation of Sauron's will looming over her vanished, but too late - that one moment had been enough. The dragon began to come apart, skin peeling, flesh flaking away from bone that splintered and fell dead to the earth. Galadriel's voice rose and grew, a shaking, breaking, triumphant thing, and light bloomed out across the valley like the sun had risen up out of the earth.

The light rippled outward and over her like icy water, and Bella's legs went out from under her. She gulped air like she'd been drowning.

There was a smell like ash and rain, and then it was done.  
  
The clouds overhead paled, and lost their fury, and it began again to snow.

^*^*^*^

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope it was worth the wait. :) I mean, I did give you Galadriel fighting a zombie dragon. That's got to make up for something.


	27. After Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the short chapter, after so long a wait, and also for my undoubtedly terrible elvish. Also, I hate naming characters. I wonder if I write more fanfic than original fiction in part because it saves me the trouble of naming people. 
> 
> CHAPTER SPECIFIC WARNINGS: Traumatic injury, aftermath thereof.

 

It got very cold, after that. Whether that was due to any actual drop in temperature, or merely the last of her strength draining away, Bella couldn't have said. She had the strangest feeling that she was forgetting something, but it was very hard to think when her teeth wouldn't stop chattering, and then her legs gave out.

^*^*^*^

 There was a weight on her chest, pressing down on the queasy mass of pain that was her ribs. Someone was pulling her hair, and shouting at her, and poking her in the shoulder. A sharp tap to her gorget made it ring, dully, like a dented bell. Then whoever it was got a better hold on a bit more of her hair, and the next tug was strong enough to jerk her whole head sideways. She groaned.

 “Ring!” the very loud, very rude person was saying, over and over. “Ring, ring, ring!” More tapping, plucking at her sleeve, pecking at her mail shirt. Then a jab right to her cheek, just shy of her eye – and at that, a harsh, wordless exclamation of alarm. The weight lifted momentarily before landing again on her hip, claws digging through leather. Bella moaned, blinked, tried to make her eyes focus.

 There was a raven perched on her thigh, feathers ruffled in distress, shaking its head sharply. One bright drop of blood was flung away from it tip of its beak. “Ring!” it repeated, in what sounded an awful lot like Bella's own voice.

 Then, turning around and flapping its wings, it called out, “Here, here, here!” before turning back and picking at her again – thankfully more slowly and more carefully.

 She probably ought to do something to let it – not it, her, it was Grac's betrothed, her own battlefield companion, wasn't it? - she ought to do something to let her know she was alive.

 Because she couldn't see her. Because -

 “Ring!” the raven repeated, plucking again on her sleeve, like it was trying to follow the path of it down to her hand.

 Because Bella still had her ring on, and no one could see her, and if no one else found her she was just going to lie there until she died of fever and cold and her own stupidity.

 She tried to lift her hands, which resulted in another startled squawk from the raven. One of her arms was cooperating rather better than the other. She could move her thumb well enough, though, and get the edge of one cracked nail up under the band and push at it until it fell, with a little chime, onto the snow-dusted stone.

 Away it rolled, toward the edge of the stone step on which she lay, and Bella found she really didn't care at all if it tumbled off into the rubble and was never seen again. How odd.

 It didn't, though; the raven caught it and picked it up in her beak. She all but spat it back into Bella's palm.

 “Poison,” the raven said nervously. “Wizard says.”

 Bella giggled, though pain stabbed into her sides at the movement. Well yes, she supposed it was, wasn't it? She tried to get her hand to curl around it, ideally to tuck it away into a pocket, but her hand seemed much more inclined to just lie there.

 “Tastes like orc,” the raven added – though the ring felt smooth and clean in Bella's decidedly filthy hand.

 Gandalf, at least, must be alive.

 She could ask after the others – she could, but she didn't. It was too much to hope for that they were all whole and well, and she felt so weak and raw already.

 The raven tilted its head at her, first one gleaming eye and then the other, then moved to inspect her leg. It was difficult not to flinch away, helpless and bloodied as she was. The raven was a friend – but a rather new friend, and also a huge, carrion-eating bird.

 “Bad,” the raven proclaimed of her leg.

 “Yes, yes it is,” Bella agreed, with another snort of pained, uneasy laughter.

 That got her an rather unamused glare and a clacking of beak, before the raven spread her wings.

 “Don't go!” Bella cried out, her wariness of only moments ago instantly swallowed in the terror of being alone again.

 “Not far,” said the raven, and true to her word, only hopped up onto a bit of broken wall to Bella's right. There she called out, first with wordless cawing, and then another chorus of, “Here, here, here!” She puffed up as large as she could make herself, and flapped her wings. “Here, here!”

 “You still need a name,” Bella said, when the raven returned to the ground beside her.

 “Have name. Elves give name.”

 “Oh?” Bella asked, as the raven got ahold of her sleeve and dragged her arm closer in toward her body. The movement was dizzying agony, but she would stay warmer that way, wouldn't she? She didn't have the strength to object, regardless, and only just managed to keep the ring in her hand, caged within her loosely curled fingers.

 “Curwen. Clever lady.”

 “Oh, that's very nice,” Bella said. “It does suit you; how in the world did you find me?”

 The raven – Curwen - snorted; there was something of Dwalin's snort in the sound. “Stones fall, blood smears. No snow.”

 It didn't sound so miraculous when put like that; only a matter of having a aerial perspective. “Well, thank you.”

 Curwen didn't answer, but eyed her critically. “Should go, bring help. You, flying away.”

 Such a lovely euphemism for dying, when not applied to oneself, Bella thought.

 “Orcs not all dead. Some hide.”

 Also there was that.

 “I can put my ring back on, if I hear anyone coming,” Bella suggested, and refrained from wailing for Curwen to stay.

 “Yes. Good.” She took to the sky, and then there was nothing to do but wait.

 It was cold. It was so, so cold.

 Bella knew she had to stay awake; that if she closed her eyes, it was likely she wouldn't open them again. No matter how she wanted to just let her mind drift away from wreck of her body, she couldn't. Mustn't.

 But there was no helping it, in the end.

 ^*^*^*^

 She did wake again, and in the moment of waking, wished she hadn't. It felt as if every bone in her body was grinding against every other, and her skin was full of pins. She screamed and kicked, but the hands lifting her were implacable.

 “ _Díheno ammen, heryn nín, boe ammen. Reitha naîdh.”_

 “I'm sorry,” Bella said, or tried to say, but couldn't quite find the breath for words, and then it all burned away to white nothingness.

 ^*^*^*^

 It happened again, and again – she woke, everything hurt, she was somewhere strange, she tried to speak, and then she was insensible again. Bella was aware of being placed on a pallet, being carried, having her armor removed. The embarrassment of being stripped down to her skin by utter strangers was distant, a thing she knew she ought to be feeling, but didn't quite have the strength to actually feel. Something foul-tasting was smeared onto her tongue, and it made even her moments of wakefulness hazy and strange. It seemed as though there were voices constantly all around her, hands always touching her. She was cold and then hot and then cold again, and choking on the broth dripped into her mouth, and sick, over and over and over.

 Her mother came and stood at her bedside, wearing the red flowered dress that had been Bella's favorite when she was very, very small. Belladonna the elder brushed her hair from her forehead, and said, “Go to sleep, you little imp, you've had a big day.”

 So Bella did.

 ^*^*^*^

 When she finally woke properly, it was to the sound of Bofur's snoring.

 He was propped up in a chair in the corner, a piece of wood that looked to be turning into a pipe forgotten in his lap, his carving knife laying on the floor where it had dropped from his limp fingers.

 Between his chair and Bella's pallet was a small table with a pitcher, a cup and bowl, and all manner of tiny bottles on it. Across the room was a wooden door, slightly ajar, then a fireplace, and around the corner from that, a window with a piece of thin, oiled leather stretched over it. Light filtered in through the leather, steady and golden. Daylight. Not the mountain, then. The room smelled of honey and unfamiliar herbs.

 Why was it Bofur, at her bedside? Where was Thorin? Dread curled in her gut. Were they the only two left alive, she and Bofur? They weren't in the mountain, what did that mean?

 “Bofur,” Bella tried to say, but her voice came out a barely-audible croak, and he didn't stir. She was thirsty – maddeningly thirsty, the moment she noticed it.

 Bella wriggled – slow and weak and still aching – to the edge of the bed, and reached for the pitcher.

She succeeded only in knocking several of the medicine bottles from the table; they were thankfully heavy glass, and survived their fall to the floor, but the clatter had Bofur snorting and flailing into wakefulness.

 “Burglar!” he exclaimed, “You really there this time, lass?”

 “Was I not before?” Bella asked; speaking tickled her dry throat, and she began to cough.

 “Everwhere _but_ here, you were.” He stood and poured a little water from the pitcher to the cup. “And full of all manner of opinions, too.” He slid a hand behind her head to help her raise it, and brought the cup to her lips. A few blissful sips, and he was already pulling it away.

 “I wasn't finished!” Bella protested. She tried to lean after the cup, but discovered that lifting her own head for more than a moment was yet beyond her.

 “Little bits at a time, that's what the elves said,” Bofur insisted. “And while normally I wouldn't put much stock by what elves say, they do seem to have patched you up well enough.”

 “How long?”

 “Six days,” Bofur said. “Thorin's gonna have a fit that you woke up when he wasn't here.”

 “He's alive?” Bella asked, her voice very small – as if Bofur would be talking about him pitching fits if he weren't, but even so, she needed to hear it again, in no uncertain terms.

 “Oh, aye. We all made it through, believe it or not – some in more pieces than others, but everybody's still breathing.”

 “You all -” She didn't dare complete the thought.. “Don't lie to me. Please don't.”

 “Hey now, I wasn't! Really, we're all still around!”

 “That's – how can -” Her eyes grew hot, her vision blurring with tears. “ _How?_ ”

 “None of that!” Bofur exclaimed, flapping his hands and looking increasingly panicked. “No crying, s'not allowed! Been a damn trial and a half getting water in you, there'll be no leaking it away!”

 “Swear!” Bella insisted. “Swear you're not just telling me happy lies so I'll get well.”

 “I swear,” Bofur said, and knelt down beside the bed to be on eye level with her. “How's this – Fili's down an eye. Ori's not likely to walk again. Bifur – Bifur wandered off into the mountain, after, and nobody's seen him for days. The men and elves what died, we're still counting. Two ravens, too, and three eagles. Would I tell you all that, if I were lying to keep you calm?”

 “I – I saw,” Bella said, wiping at her face and struggling to steady her breathing. Oh, _Ori –_ but he was _alive._ “The eagles. Two of them, anyway. I saw.”

 “Me too. Worst thing I'd ever seen.”

 “You swear? The whole company, they're alive? Tauriel too?”

 “Tauriel too,” Bofur said. “Swear on my honor as a dwarf. Swear by the Maker. Swear by my best knife. Swear by my _hat._ ”

 Bella was, as he surely intended, trying not to laugh by the end of that.

 “Little more water?” he asked.

 She nodded, and drank.

 “We thought we were going to lose _you_ , for quite a while there,” Bofur told her. “And that was after we found you. How'd you end up all the way in Dale?”

 “I -” Bella stopped. She tried to fit where she'd been, what she'd done, into words. “I walked.”

 “You walked.”

 “Limped, actually.”

 There was a long moment of silence. The fire crackled.

 “I should get Thorin. Probably ought to let one of them elvish healers know you're awake, too,” Bofur said, and stood.

 “Wait.” Bella caught his hand. “I'm glad you're alright.” _I'm sorry that the first thought I had when I saw you alive was that you weren't the person I most wanted to see,_ she did not say.

 “You too, lass. You too.”

 ^*^*^*^

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
